w, now, no return to
her hills, and her longing for them grew as the years passed, and her
curiosity flattened in the dull round of duties and commonplace routine.
Only one emotion largely controlled her thought and that was a dumb
gratitude for what she believed she was receiving. She could not agree
that her devoted service gave ample return. She was under obligation,
and the feeling was blighting to the girl's independence. Work, the
necessity for work, was an accepted state of mind to poor Mary. The
luxury and consideration that were hers in her present life took from
labour, as far as she mentally considered it, all the essential
qualities that gave her independence. She was accepting--so she
reflected in that proud detached logic of the hills--from outsiders what
no mere bodily labour could repay, certainly not such service as she was
giving. Just loving and caring for two little children!

With cautious and suspicious watchfulness through the years Mary
regarded Doris Fletcher still as "foreign." Foreign to all that was born
and bred in the girl's inheritance of mountain aristocracy, but she had
been touched by the justice, the unerring kindness of the woman, who,
to Mary's wrong ideals, gave and gave and constantly made it impossible
for her to make return.

"Some day," the girl vowed, when her manner was most grim and repelling,
"some day I'll do something to pay back!" And then she grew bewildered
in the maze of wondering if the "quality" so precious to her
understanding might not exist in all places? Might it not be?--but here
Mary became lost.

When she recalled, as less and less she did, the unlawful spying of hers
on the west chamber of Ridge House, she set her lips in a firm line. She
had gone far enough on her upward way to detest the cringing, deceitful
methods of her childhood and she sternly sought to right herself, with
her burdening conscience, by putting away forever what possible
significance lay in the strange coming of that first and second child to
Ridge House.

"Were they twins? Were--they?" But Mary always was frightened when she
got into her mental depths.

Three or four vital and significant events marked the years intervening
between Doris's return to New York and the day when Joan and Nancy
entered womanhood.

The first incident seemed slight in itself but proved the truth of the
need for caution when one is on a blind trail. With all her good
intentions and high hopes Doris was b