rest!" she cried. "You are ill. You shouldn't have come down."

"No. It's nothing. I've been shut up all day. Go and open the other
window."

Shirley threw it wide. "Can I get your salts?" she asked anxiously.

Her mother shook her head. "No," she said almost sharply. "There's
nothing whatever the matter with me. Only my nerves aren't what they
used to be, I suppose--and snakes always _did_ get on them. Now, give me
the gist of it first. I can wait for the rest. There's a tenant at
Damory Court. And his name's John--Valiant. And he was bitten by a
moccasin. When?"

"This afternoon."

Mrs. Dandridge's voice shook. "Will he--will he recover?"

"Oh, yes."

"Beyond any question?"

"The doctor says so."

"And you found him, Shirley--_you_?"

"I was there when it happened." She had crouched down on the rug in her
favorite posture, her coppery hair against her mother's knee, catching
strange reddish over-tones like molten metal, from the shaded lamp. Mrs.
Dandridge fingered her cane nervously. Then she dropped her hand on the
girl's head.

"Now," she said, "tell me _all_ about it."

CHAPTER XXII

THE ANNIVERSARY

The story was not a long one, though it omitted nothing: the morning
fox-hunt and the identification of the new arrival at Damory Court as
the owner of yesterday's stalled motor; the afternoon raid on the
jessamine, the conversation with John Valiant in the woods.

Mrs. Dandridge, gazing into the fire, listened without comment, but more
than once Shirley saw her hands clasp themselves together and thought,
too, that she seemed strangely pale. The swift and tragic sequel to that
meeting was the hardest to tell, and as she ended she put up her hand to
her shoulder, holding it hard. "It was horrible!" she said. Yet now she
did not shudder. Strangely enough, the sense of loathing which had been
surging over her at recurrent intervals ever since that hour in the
wood, had vanished utterly!

She read the newspaper article aloud and her mother listened with an
expression that puzzled her. When she finished, both were silent for a
moment, then she asked, "You must have known his father, dearest; didn't
you?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Dandridge after a pause. "I--knew his father."

Shirley said no more, and facing each other in the candle-glow, across
the spotless damask, they talked, as with common consent, of other
things. She thought she had never seen her mother more brilliant. An odd
excitement wa