of the little
dead child. Loving Lance rose from his chair and kissed her.

"You would not like to lose that, my darling, would you?" he said,
"Excepting me, that is all you have in the world."

They seemed to forget all about me; she clung to him, and he kissed her
face until I thought he would never give over.

"How lovely you were when I found you, Frances," he said. "Do you
remember the evening--you were bending over the crysanthemums?"

"I shall forget my own life and my own soul before I forget that," she
replied.

And I said to myself: "Even if my suspicion be perfectly true, have I
any right to mar such love as that?" I noticed that during all the
conversation about the locket, she never once looked at me.

We went to Vale Royal, and there never was man so bewildered as I. Lance
proposed that we should go visiting with Mrs. Fleming.

"Get your purse ready, John," he said--"this visit will require a small
fortune."

"I find the poor value kind words as much as money," said the beautiful
woman.

"Then they must be very disinterested," he said, laughingly--"I should
prefer money."

"You are only jesting," she said.

It was a pretty sight to see her go into those poor, little, dirty
houses. There was no pride, no patronage, no condescension--she was
simply sweetly natural; she listened to their complaints, gave them
comfort and relieved their wants. As I watched her I could not help
thinking to myself that if I were a fashionable or titled lady, this
would be my favorite relaxation--visiting and relieving the poor. I
never saw so much happiness purchased by a few pounds. We came to a
little cottage that stood by itself in a garden.

"Are you growing tired?" she asked of her husband.

"I never tire with you," he replied.

"And you, Mr. Ford?" she said.

She never overlooked or forgot me, but studied my comfort on every
occasion. I could have told her that I was watching what was to me a
perfect problem--the kindly, gentle, pitying deeds of a woman, who had,
I believed, murdered her own child.

"I am not tired, Mrs. Fleming, I am interested," I said.

The little cottage which stood in the midst of a wild patch of garden
was inhabited by a day-laborer. He was away at work; his wife sat at
home nursing a little babe, a small, fair, tiny child, evidently not
more than three weeks old, dying, too, if one could judge from the face.

She bent over it--the beautiful, graceful woman who was Lance's wif