er attempt
was successful--just as she would have done had her pretended telegram
really come from Portia. She had packed, looked up trains, made a
reservation. She had called up Frederica and told her the news. The
train she had selected left at an hour and on a day when she knew
Frederica wouldn't be able to come and see her off. Frederica had come
down to the house of course to say good-by to her, and carrying her
pretense through that scene, that had for her so much deeper and more
poignant a regret than she dared show--because she really loved
Frederica--was, next to bidding the twins good-by, the hardest thing she
had to go through with. Lying and pretending were always terribly hard
for Rose, and a lie to any one she was fond of, almost impossible. The
only thing that enabled her to see it through, was the consideration
that she was doing it for Rodney. He'd probably tell Frederica what had
happened in time, but Rose was determined that he should have the
privilege of choosing his own time for doing it.

Her bag was packed, her trunk was gone, her motor waiting at the door to
take her to the station, when the maid Doris brought the twins home from
their airing. This wasn't chance, but prearrangement.

"Give them to me;" Rose said, "and then you may go up and tell Mrs.
Ruston she may have them in a few minutes."

She took them into her bedroom and laid them side by side on her bed.
They had thriven finely--justified, as far as that went, Harriet's
decision in favor of bottle feeding. Had she died back there in that bed
of pain, never come out of the ether at all, they'd still be just like
this--plump, placid, methodical. Rose had thought of that a hundred
times, but it wasn't what she was thinking of now.

The thing that caught her as she stood looking down on them, was the
wave of sudden pity. She saw them suddenly as persons with the long road
all ahead of them, as a boy and a girl, a youth and a maid, a man and a
woman. They were destined to have their hopes and loves, fears,
triumphs, tragedies perhaps. The boy there, Rodney, might have to face,
some day, the situation his father confronted now; might have to come
back into an empty home, and turn a stiff inexpressive face on a coolly
curious world. Little Portia there might find herself, some day, gazing
with wide seared eyes, at a life some unexpected turn of the wheel of
Fate had thrust her, all unprepared, into the midst of. Or it might be
her fate to