Beale switched him away from the topic expeditiously. He should not
see her as yet in the bosom of her family. _He should not_. He should
not see Cecily with her air of mature motherliness. He should not see
Victor, Cecily's husband, who was ten years older than Cecily and only
ten years younger than herself. He should not hear her big son Bob call
her "Grandma." He should not gaze upon the pretty deference of Bob's
little wife toward the queen-dowager!

Dining later opposite Landry in a great golden palace, Cissy seemed like
some gay tropical bird. In her new and lovely clothes she was very
pretty, very witty, almost girlishly charming. Yet Landry was conscious
of a vague feeling of disappointment. She had been more serenely
satisfying in Chicago--not so brilliantly hard, not so persistently
vivacious. How could he know that the change was one of desperation?
Cissy, as grandmother, felt that she must prove, even to herself, that
she was not yet a back number.

With this rift in the lute of their budding romance, they ate and drank
and went to the play and had what might otherwise have been an
enchanted ride home in the moonlight. But when Landry said "Good-night"
Cissy felt the loss of something in his manner. His greeting that
afternoon had had in it something almost of tenderness; his farewell was
commonplace and slightly constrained.

As Mrs. Beale went through the dimly lighted hall to her room, she met
Cecily in a flowing garment, pacing back and forth with the baby in her
arms.

"She isn't well," Cecily whispered, as the little lady in the lace frock
questioned her. "I don't know whether I ought to call a doctor or not."

Mrs. Beale poked the tiny mite with an expert finger. "I'll give her a
drink of hot water with a drop of peppermint in it," she said, "as soon
as I get my hat off, and you'd better go back to bed, Cecily; you aren't
well enough to worry with her."

Cecily looked relieved. "I was worried," she confessed. "It's nurse's
night out and Victor had to go to a board meeting unexpectedly--and with
you away--I lost my nerve. It seemed dreadful to be alone, mother."

Mrs. Beale knew how dreadful it was. She had carried the wailing Cecily
in her arms night after night in the weeks which followed the crushing
knowledge of her husband's infidelity. But she had carried a heavier
burden than the child--the burden of poverty, of desertion, of an
unknown future.

But these things were not to be voiced. "