mother started as if stung. "Oh!" she exclaimed, and her tone was
so declaratory that it was not necessary to add the unspoken--"it's _you_,
is it?"

"He is asleep," said Lutie gently. "They won't even allow _me_ to go in."

This was too much for Mrs. Tresslyn. She transfixed the slight, tired-eyed
young woman with a look that would have chilled any one else to the
bone--the high-bred look that never fails to put the lowly in their places.

"Indeed," she said, with infinite irony in her voice. "This is Miss
Carnahan, I believe?" She lifted her lorgnon as a further aid to
inspection.

"I am the person you have always spoken of as Miss Carnahan," said Lutie
calmly. Throughout the brief period in which she had been legally the wife
of George Tresslyn, Lutie was never anything but Miss Carnahan to her
mother-in-law. Mrs. Tresslyn very carefully forbore giving her daughter-
in-law a respectable name. "I was afraid you might have forgotten me."

"You will forgive me if I confess that I have tried very hard to forget
you, Miss Carnahan," said the older woman.

"It isn't my fault that you haven't been able to do so," said Lutie.
"Please! you are not to go in." Mrs. Tresslyn's hand was turning the door-
knob.

"I fear you are forgetting who I am," said she coldly.

"Oh, I know you're his mother, and all that," said Lutie, breathlessly. "I
do not question your right to be with your son. That isn't the point. The
nurse has ordered your daughter and me out of the room for awhile. It is
the first wink of sleep he has had in heaven knows how long. So you cannot
go in and disturb him, Mrs. Tresslyn."

Mrs. Tresslyn's hand fell away from the knob. For a moment she regarded
the tense, agitated girl in silence.

"Has it occurred to you to feel--if you can feel at all--that you may not be
wanted here, Miss Carnahan?" she said, deliberately cruel. She towered
above her adversary.

"Will you be kind enough to come away from the door?" said Lutie, wholly
unimpressed. "It isn't very thick, and the sound of voices may penetrate--"

"Upon my soul!" exclaimed Mrs. Tresslyn, staring. "Do you presume to--"

"Not quite so loud, if you please. Come over here if you want to talk to
me, Mrs. Tresslyn. Nurse's orders, not mine. I don't in the least mind
what you say to me, or what you call me, or anything, but I do entreat you
to think of George."

Greatly to her own surprise, Mrs. Tresslyn moved away from the door, and,
blaming hersel