y, it's more likely you never saw 'im
either."

"Is he at their country home also?" Cassandra asked. She had seated
herself in the hall, for her heart throbbed chokingly, and the lump was
heavy in her throat. It was as she had dreamed sometimes, when her feet
seemed to cling to the earth, and would not lift her weight up some
steep hill.

"'Is lordship is still in Hafrica, mam. 'E 'ave been a great traveller,
but 'e can't stay much longer now, for Lady Laura is to 'ave a grand
coming out, and 'is lordship is to be married. Her ladyship's 'eart is
set on it, and on 'is marrying 'igh, too. That's gossip, you know."

Cassandra rose and stood suddenly poised for flight. She must get out of
that house and hear no more. She had a silver shilling in her hand, for
Betty Towers had told her all servants expected a tip, and this was
intended for the cabman. Had she followed her impulse, she would have
darted by with her fingers in her ears, but instead, she dropped the
shilling in the old man's hand, and quietly turned toward the door.

"Thank you," his fingers closed over the shilling. Her pallor struck him
then, even as the red spot on her cheek deepened, and he held out his
arms for the child.

"Let me carry 'im for you, ma'm. Is it a boy?"

But her arms closed tighter about her baby. "He is my little son." It
was almost a cry, as she said it, but again she forced herself to
calmness, and, walking slowly out, added, with a quiet smile: "I always
keep him myself. We do in America."

In a moment she was gone. The warm sunlight burst in on them and flooded
the cold hall as the old man stood in the doorway looking after the
retreating cab, and down at the silver shilling.

Darker, dingier, stuffier, seemed the box of a room, as she walked into
it and laid her still sleeping babe on the bed. She felt herself moving
in an unreal world. David--her David--she had not come to him after all;
she had come to an empty place. She knelt and threw her arms about her
little son, encircling his head and his feet. She neither wept nor
prayed; and the red spot burned against the creamy whiteness of her
skin. She was not thinking, only looking, seeing into the past and down
the long vista of her future.

Pictures came to her--pictures of her girlhood--her dim aspirations--her
melancholy-eyed father--his hilltop--and beloved, sunlit mountains. In
the radiance of the spring, she saw them, and in the glory of the
autumn; she breathed the