little torn places at the edge of
the covers. Looks as if it had once had clasps----"

"Perhaps it's the Madison family album," Mrs. Lindley suggested.
"Pictures of Cora since infancy. I imagine she's had plenty
taken."

"No." He opened the book and glanced at the pages covered in
Laura's clear, readable hand. "No, it's about half full of
writing. Laura must have turned literary." He read a line or two,
frowning mildly. "My soul! I believe it's a novel! She must think
I'm a critic--to want me to read it." Smiling at the idea, he
closed the ledger. "I'll take it upstairs to my hang-out after
dinner, and see if Laura's literary manner has my august approval.
Who in the world would ever have thought she'd decide to set up
for a writer?"

"I imagine she might have something to write worth reading," said
his mother. "I've always thought she was an interesting-looking
girl."

"Yes, she is. She dances well, too."

"Of course," continued Mrs. Lindley, thoughtfully, "she seldom
_says_ anything interesting, but that may be because she so seldom
has a chance to say anything at all."

Richard refused to perceive this allusion. "Curious that Laura
should have sent it to me," he said. "She's never seemed
interested in my opinion about anything. I don't recall her ever
speaking to me on any subject whatever--except one."

He returned his attention to his plate, but his mother did not
appear to agree with him that the topic was exhausted.

"`Except one'?" she repeated, after waiting for some time.

"Yes," he replied, in his habitual preoccupied and casual tone.
"Or perhaps two. Not more than two, I should say--and in a way
you'd call that only one, of course. Bread, Joe."

"What two, Richard?"

"Cora," he said, with gentle simplicity, "and me."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Mrs. Lindley had arranged for her son a small apartment on the
second floor, and it was in his own library and smoking-room that
Richard, comfortable in a leather-chair by a reading-lamp, after
dinner, opened Laura's ledger.

The first page displayed no more than a date now eighteen months
past, and the line:

"Love came to me to-day."

The next page was dated the next day, and, beneath, he read:

"That was all I _could_ write, yesterday. I think I was too
excited to write. Something seemed to be singing in my breast. I
couldn't think in sentences--not even in words. How queer it is
that I had decided to keep a diary, and bound this book f