t blessed little thing, didn't you?"

"She is in the hands of the Lord," said Mrs. Applegate.

"If the police of New York were worth anything, she would be in the
police station by this time," said Mrs. Adams, with a fierce toss of
her pretty blond head.

"We know not where His islands lift their fronded palms in air; we
only know we cannot drift beyond His love and care," said Mrs.
Applegate, with a solemn aside. Tears were in her own eyes, but she
resolutely checked her impulse to weep. She felt that it would show a
lack of faith. She was entirely in earnest.

"Mebbe she _is_ in the police-station," sobbed Mrs. White, continuing
to embrace Maria. But Maria gave her a forcible push away, and again
addressed herself to her step-mother.

"Where is she?" she demanded.

"Oh, you poor, dear child! Your ma don't know where she is, and she
is so awful upset, she sets there jest like marble," said Mrs. White.

"She isn't upset at all. You don't know her as well as I do," said
Maria, mercilessly. "She thinks she ought to act upset, so she sits
this way. She isn't upset."

"Oh, Maria!" gasped Mrs. White.

"The child is out of her head," said Mrs. Adams, and yet she looked
at Maria with covert approval. She was Ida's intimate friend, but in
her heart of hearts she doubted her grief. She had once lost by death
a little girl of her own. She kept thinking of her little Alice, and
how she should feel in a similar case. It did not seem to her that
she should rock, and look at a Tiffany vase. She inveighed against
the detectives and police with a reserve meaning of indignation
against Ida. It seemed to her that any woman whose child was lost
should be up and generally making a tumult, if she were doing nothing
else.

The Maria, standing before the beautiful woman swaying gently, with
her eyes fixed upon the pink and gold of the vase, spoke out for the
first time what was in her heart of hearts with regard to her.

"You are a wicked woman," said she; "that is what you are. I don't
know as you can help being wicked. I guess you were made wicked; but
you _are_ a wicked woman. Your mouth smiles, but your heart never
does. You act now as if you were sorry," said she, "but you are not
sorry, the way my mother would have been sorry if she had lost me,
the way she would have been sorry if Evelyn had been her little girl
instead of yours. You are a wicked woman. I have always known it, but
I have never told you so before. Now I am