--strove to
find some alteration in the familiar features, something that she had
never before noticed, some new, unsuspected splendour of beauty and
charm, some undetected and subtle allure. She saw only a wholesome,
young, and lovely woman, fresh-skinned, slender, sweet, and
graceful--the same companion she had always known and, as she
remembered, unchanged in any way since the years of childhood, when
Kathleen was twenty and she and her brother were ten.

"I suppose," she said, "that if Scott is in love with you, there is only
one thing to do."

"There are several," said Kathleen in a low voice.

"Will you not marry him?"

"I don't know; I think not."

"Are you not in love with him?"

"Does that matter?" asked Kathleen steadily. "Scott's happiness is what
is important."

"But his happiness, apparently, depends on you."

Kathleen flushed and looked at her curiously.

"Dear, if I knew that was so, I would give myself to him. Neither you
nor he have ever asked anything of me in vain. Even if I did not love
him--as I do--and he needed me, I would give myself to him. You and he
have been all there was in life for me. But I am afraid that I may not
always be all that life holds for him. He is young; he has had no chance
yet; he has had little experience with women. I think he ought to have
his chance."

She might have said the same thing of herself. A bride at her husband's
death-bed, widowed before she had ever been a wife, what experience had
she? All her life so far had been devoted to the girl who stood there
confronting her, and to the brother. What did she know of men?--of
whether she might be capable of loving some man more suitable? She had
not given herself the chance. She never would, now.

There was no selfishness in Kathleen Severn. But there was much in the
Seagrave twins. The very method of their bringing up inculcated it; they
had never had any chance to be otherwise. The "cultiwation of the
indiwidool" had driven it into them, taught them the deification of
self, forced them to consider their own importance above anything else
in the world.

And it was of that importance that Geraldine was now thinking as she sat
on the edge of her bed, darkly considering these new problems that
chance was laying before her one by one.

If Scott was going to be unhappy without Kathleen, it followed, as a
matter of course, that he must have Kathleen. The chances Kathleen might
take, what she might have to e