ad been concerned in her
secret romance she had taken upon herself the more or less vicarious
guardianship of the son of the man she had loved and foregone.

The boy lived with his mother's people, and Mrs. Tweksbury only visited
him occasionally; but her proud, stern old heart knew only one undying
passion now--her passion for children.

When Nancy and Joan stood before her, she regarded them with almost
tragic, and, at the same time, comic expression. The children were
frightened at her twitching, wrinkled face and glanced at Doris, who
smiled them into calmness.

In Joan, Mrs. Tweksbury saw resemblance to no one she remembered, so she
concluded she must be like the father, physically, whom they must all
ignore absolutely. Try as she valiantly did, the old lady felt her
quick-beating heart falter before Joan's earnest, searching gaze. It was
a relief to turn to Nancy and permit her eyes to dim and soften.

"My dear, my dear," she said to Doris, "how like dear Merry the baby is!
Just so, I recall--"

Doris's face grew strained and ashy. "Please," she implored, "please,
Aunt Emily--don't!"

"Of course, of course, my child. Very indiscreet of me--but I was taken
off my guard." Then--"My dears, will you kiss me?" This to the children
keeping their courage up by clinging together.

"No," Joan replied in a tone entirely free from bad manners but weighted
with simple truth; "Joan likes to kiss Auntie Dorrie." The inference
stiffened Mrs. Tweksbury and caused Doris a qualm.

"And you?" The old lady's tone was pathetic in its appeal to Nancy--her
"intuition" was at stake.

Nancy drew nearer. She was fascinated, afraid, but guided by a strange
impulse. "Nancy will," she panted, "Nancy will kiss you--two times!"

Mrs. Tweksbury's breath caught in her throat--she strangled but
controlled herself and bent as a queen might to the sweet uplifted face
at her knee.

After that visit Doris would have had a difficult task in stemming a
flood that Mrs. Tweksbury directed, having removed the dam. While she
fairly grovelled, emotionally, before Nancy, the old lady defended Joan
by stern insistence upon traits of nobility unsuspected by others in the
child.

"The wretch of a father," she mentally vowed, "shall not have the child
if suggestion can prevent."

Spiritually she fell in line with Doris, and where Mrs. Tweksbury led it
were wiser and easier to follow than to blaze new trails.

The second event that marked a new e