is face horrified: "Lydia, I
cannot let you go on! you are unfair--you shock me. You are morbid! I
knew your father intimately. He loved you beyond expression. He would
have done anything for you. But his profession is an exacting one. Put
yourself in his place a little. It is all or nothing in the law--as in
business."

"When you bring children into the world, you expect to have them cost
you some money, don't you? You know you mustn't let them die of
starvation. Why oughtn't you to expect to have them cost you thought,
and some sharing of your life with them, and some time--real time, not
just scraps that you can't use for business?"

As the doctor faced her, open-mouthed and silent, she went on, still
dry-eyed, but with a quaver in her voice that was like a sob: "But, oh,
the worst of my blame is for myself! I was a blind, selfish,
self-centered egotist. I could have changed things if I had only tried
harder. I am paying for it now. I am paying for it!"

She took her child up in her arms and bent over the dark silky hair. She
whispered, "It's not that I have lost my father. I never had a
father--but you!" She put out her hand and pressed the doctor's hard.
"And my poor father had no daughter."

She set the child on the floor with a gesture almost violent, and cried
out loudly, breaking for the first time her cheerless calm, "And now it
is too late!"

Ariadne turned her rosy round face to her mother's, startled, almost
frightened. Lydia knelt down and put her arms about the child. She
looked solemnly into her godfather's eyes, and, as though she were
taking a great and resolute oath, she said, "But it is not too late for
Ariadne."

CHAPTER XXVI

A HINT FROM CHILDHOOD

As the spring advanced and Judge Emery's widow recovered a little
strength, it became apparent that life in Endbury, with its
heartbreaking associations, would be intolerable to her. In anxious
family councils many futile plans were suggested, but they were all
brushed decisively away by the unexpected arrival from Oregon of the
younger son of the family.

One day in May, a throbbingly sunshiny day, full of a fierce hot vigor
of vitality, Lydia was with her mother in the Melton's darkened parlor.
As so often, the two women had been crying and now sat in a weary
lethargy, hand in hand. There came a step on the porch, in the hall, and
in the doorway stood a tall stranger. Lydia looked at him blankly, but
her mother gave a cry and flung