tion that Hasketh and I had been old friends, and I ought to have
noticed that I had not met him during the time of his absence. The fact
was we had never come so near intimacy as when we exchanged confidences
concerning the severity of Tedham's sentence in coming out of the
court-room together.

"_I_ hadn't any interest in Canada, except to get the child away," said
Mrs. Hasketh. "Sometimes it seemed strange _we_ should be in Canada, and
not Mr. Tedham! She got acquainted with some little girls who were going
to a convent school there as externes--outside pupils, you know," Mrs.
Hasketh explained to my wife. "She got very fond of one of them--she is
a child of very warm affections. I never denied that Mr. Tedham had warm
_affections_--and when her little girl friend went into the convent to
go on with her education there, Fay wanted to go too, and--we let her.
That was when she was twelve, and Mr. Hasketh felt that he ought to come
back and look after his business here; and we left her in the convent.
Just as soon as she was out of the way, and out of the question, it
seemed as if I got to feeling differently toward Mr. Tedham. I don't
mean to say I ever got to like him, or that I do to this day; but I saw
that he had some rights, too, and for years and years I wanted to take
the child and tell her when he was coming out. I used to ask myself what
right I even had to keep the child from the suffering. The suffering was
hers by rights, and she ought to go through it. I got almost crazy
thinking it over. I got to thinking that her share of her father's shame
might be the very thing, of all things, that was to discipline her and
make her a good and useful woman; and that's much more than being a
happy one, Mrs. March; we can't any of us be truly happy, no matter
what's done for us. I tried to make believe that I was sparing her
alone, but I knew I was sparing myself, too, and that made it harder to
decide." She suddenly addressed herself to us both: "What would _you_
have done?"

My wife and I looked at each other in a dismay in which a glance from
old Hasketh assured us that we had his sympathy. It would have been far
simpler if Mrs. Hasketh had been up and down with us as Tedham's
emissaries, and refused to tell us anything of his daughter, and left us
to report to him that he must find her for himself if he found her at
all. This was what we had both expected, and we had come prepared to
take back that answer to Tedha