ermit it?" demanded Mrs. Carolan, miserably.

"Jeanie, dearest, I don't know what I'd do!"

After a long silence, Mary slipped from the bedside and went
noiselessly to the door and down the stairs, vague ideas of hot tea in
mind. In the dining-room she was surprised to find Sidney, looking
white and exhausted, and mixing himself something at the sideboard.

"I'm glad you're with Jean," he said directly. "I'm off to get the boy!
The car is to be brought round in a few minutes."

Mrs. Moore went to him, and laid her fingers on his arm.

"Sidney!" she protested sharply, "you must stop this--not for Peter;
he's as naughty as he can be, like all other boys his age sometimes;
but you don't want to kill Jean!" And, to her self-contempt, she began
to cry.

"My dear girl," he said concernedly, "you mustn't take this matter too
hard. Jean knows enough of our family history to realize--"

"All that is such nonsense!" she protested angrily. But she saw that he
was not listening. He compared his watch with the big dining-room
clock, and then, quite as mechanically picked Peter's mug from the
group of bowls and flagons on the sideboard, studied the chasing
absently for a moment, and, stooping, placed the mug just as it had
fallen four days before. Mary watched as if fascinated.

A moment later she ran upstairs, her heart thundering with a sense of
her own daring. She entered the dark bedroom hurriedly, and leaned over
Jean.

"Jean! Jean, I hate to tell you! But Sidney's going to leave in a few
minutes to bring Peter home. He's going after him."

She had to repeat the message before the meaning of it flashed into the
heavy eyes so near her own. Then Jean gathered her filmy gown together,
and ran to the door.

"He shall not!" she said, panting, and Mary heard her imperative call,
"Sidney! Sidney!" as she ran downstairs. Then she heard both their
voices.

With an intolerable consciousness of eavesdropping, Mrs. Moore slipped
out of the house by the servants' quarters, and crossed the drying lawn
at the back of the house, to gain the old grape arbor beyond. She sat
there with burning cheeks and a fast-beating heart, and gazed with
unseeing eyes down the valley.

Presently she heard the horn and the scraping start of the motor-car,
and a moment later it swept into view on the road below. Sidney was its
only occupant.

Mrs. Moore sat there thinking a long while. Dull clouds banked
themselves in the west, and the rising br