or no conscience
there were moments when consideration for the proprieties should be
paramount.

She continued: "Possibly Sylvia told you that she was still convalescing
from a severe illness when she was called upon to pass through the
sorrow of losing her dear father,--a very artistic, unpractical soul,
my poor brother,--and really it was a mercy the judge had the farm to
send her to. Thinkright was of course ready to take her, as he is for
every good word and work, and it has turned out so well. He and she
have taken the greatest fancy to one another"--

"Then is she there still?" asked Edna, as Miss Lacey paused for a hasty
selection of further detail.

"Yes, indeed. We shouldn't think of allowing her to leave, and," very
confidentially, "I don't know whether you ever heard of the romance of
Thinkright's life?"

Edna shook her head. Miss Martha nodded hers impressively. "Yes.
Sylvia's mother. Mh'm. There's something quite touching about this
outcome. He seems to consider that he has almost adopted Sylvia,--that
she belongs to him."

Edna gave a little exclamation. "Any girl would be fortunate to belong
to Thinkright," she returned.

"Yes, indeed. He's a good man, and the judge and I feel perfectly
easy"--Miss Martha used that form of speech with subtle
satisfaction--"to leave her with him. Of course we're three lone, lorn
people, and Thinkright's less closely related to the child than we; but
neither the judge nor I would feel it right"--here conscience reared
until it threatened to stop her speech altogether. "Will you wait till
your advice is asked?" she demanded in fierce, silent parenthesis. Then
with a vigorous swallow she finished her sentence,--"feel it right to
take her away from him."

Miss Martha leaned back in her chair flushed and guiltily content. She
had made her impression, and she was willing to pay for it with vigils
if necessary.

"The girl certainly couldn't be in a better place for either mind or
body," returned Edna thoughtfully, looking out the window; "but I
wonder, since you tell me this, why the evening I was there she was so
insistent about going away."

Miss Martha recalled vaguely a quotation concerning the swiftness with
which a start in deceit becomes a tangled web.

"You see, she wasn't real well," she returned, "and I suppose she had
fancies; but I'm expecting to find her settled and happy by this time.
She certainly would be excusable if she was a little notional and
r