nce she
came to Crompton.

"Certainly; do what you like, only don't bring her here," the Colonel
replied, his voice and manner softening, as they always did with Amy.

She was a very handsome woman and looked younger than her years. The
storm which had swept over her had not impaired her physical beauty, but
had touched her mentally in a way very puzzling to those about her, and
rather annoying to the Colonel, who was trying to make amends for the
harshness which had driven her from his home. Sometimes her quiet,
passive manner irritated him, and he felt that he would gladly welcome
the old imperiousness with which she had defied him. But it was gone.
Something had broken her on the wheel, killing her spirit completely, or
smothering it and leaving her a timid, silent woman, who sat for hours
with a sad, far-off expression, as if looking into the past and trying
to gather up the tangled threads which had in a measure obscured her
intellect.

"The Harrises are queer," kept sounding in the Colonel's ears, with a
thought that the taint in the Harris blood was working in Amy's veins,
intensified by some great shock, or series of shocks.

Once, after he brought her home, he questioned her of her life as a
singer, and of the baby, which she occasionally mentioned, but he never
repeated the experiment. There was a fit of nervous trembling,--a look
of terror in her eyes, and a drawn expression on her face, and for a
moment she was like the girl Eudora when roused. Then, putting her hand
before her eyes as if to shut out something hateful to her, she said,
"Oh, don't ask me to bring up a past I can't remember without such a
pain in my head and everywhere, as if I were choking. It was very
dreadful,--with _him_,--not with Adolf,--he was so kind."

"Did he ever beat you?--or what did the wretch do? _Smith_, I mean," the
Colonel asked, and Amy replied, "Oh, no; it wasn't that. It was a
constant grind, grind,--swear, swear,--a breaking of my will, till I had
none left. He never struck me but once, and then it was throwing
something instead of a blow. It hit me here, and it has ached ever
since."

She put her hand to one side of her temple, and went on, "It was the
night I heard baby was dead, and I said I could not sing,--but he made
me, and I broke down, and I don't know much what happened after till you
came. I can't remember."

"Yes, but the baby,--where did it die, and when?" the Colonel asked.

Amy had been getting qu