me with it to Charlotte, who was not
yet up. Mrs. Anderson had insisted upon her having her breakfast in
bed, and she had yielded readily. In fact, she was both too confused
and too ashamed to see Anderson. She dreaded seeing him. She was as
simple as a child, and she reasoned simply.

"He held me in his arms and kissed me last night, the way Major Arms
would have done with Ina," she told herself, "and of course I suppose
I must be engaged to him; but I don't know what he must think of me
for coming here the way I did. It was almost as if I asked him
first." She wondered if Mrs. Anderson had seen. But Mrs. Anderson's
manner to her was of such complete and caressing motherliness that
she could not have much fear of her. In reality, the older woman, who
had an active imagination, was slightly jealous, in view of future
possibilities.

"I wonder if they will think they ought to sit by themselves
evenings," she reflected. She looked at the girl's slight grace in
the bed, and the little, dark head sunken in the pillow, and she
wondered how in the world the mother of a girl like that could stay
one minute in Kentucky and leave her. "She must be a pretty woman!"
she thought to herself. Already she hated the other mother-in-law,
and she felt almost a maternal right to the girl. She recalled what
she had seen the night before, and thrills of tender reminiscence
came over her. "Randolph will make just such a good husband as his
father," she thought to herself, and then she rather resented his
superior right over the girl, as she might have done if it had not
been a question of her own son, and Charlotte had been her own
daughter. She loved her as she loved the daughter she had never had.
She stroked her hair softly as it curled over the pillow.

"You have such pretty hair, dear," she said, with positive pride. The
little, flushed face looked up at her.

Charlotte had just finished her breakfast. Anderson had brought the
telegram and gone, and the two were alone. It was arranged that
Charlotte was to get up in an hour, and that Mrs. Anderson was to go
home with her in one of Samson Rawdy's coaches.

"We will take my maid, and she can get the furnace fire started," she
said, "and help about the dinner."

"I had such a nice dinner all ready last night," Charlotte said, "and
I am afraid it must be spoiled now."

"Never mind. We will get another," said Mrs. Anderson.

Both Anderson and his mother had succeeded in quieting Ch