head against her. "I don't know," she said.

"I often wanted to warn you," Mrs. Errol said. "But I thought--I
hoped--it was unnecessary. You were always so kind of frank with him that
I thought maybe it would be an impertinence to say anything. It wasn't as
if you were an inexperienced girl. If you had been--but to give him his
due, Nap never tried to trap inexperience. He's got some morals, knave as
he is. Say, Anne dear, you know he is no son of mine?"

"Yes," whispered Anne, gently drawing her friend's hand round her neck.

"And I sometimes wonder," Mrs. Errol went on, in her deep sing-song voice
that yet somehow held a note of pathos, "if I did wrong to take him as I
did. He was the quaintest baby, Anne--the cutest morsel you ever saw. His
dying mother brought him to me. She was only a girl herself--a
broken-hearted girl, dying before her time. I couldn't refuse. I felt he
had a sort of claim upon us. Maybe I was wrong. My husband didn't view it
that way, but at that time I hadn't much faith in his judgment. So I took
the boy--his boy--and he was brought up as one of my own. But he was
always unaccountable. He had queer lapses. I tried to be kind to him. I
guess I always was kind. But I surmise that he always suspected me of
resenting his existence. Lucas was the only one who ever had any
influence over him. Latterly I've thought you had some too, but I guess
that was where I went wrong. He and Bertie never got on. P'r'aps it was
my fault. P'r'aps he inherited some of my antagonism. The Lord knows I
tried to suppress it, but somehow it was always there."

"Dear Mrs. Errol!" Anne murmured softly. "Not one woman in a thousand
would have done as much."

"Oh, you mustn't say that, dearie. I'm a very poor specimen. I gave him
what advantages I could, but I never loved him. P'r'aps if I had, he'd
have been a better boy. It's only love that counts for anything in God's
sight, and I never gave him any. Lucas did. That's how it is he knows how
to manage him. It isn't personal magnetism or anything of that sort. It's
just love. He can't help answering to that, because it's Divine."

"Ah!" breathed Anne. "You think him capable of love then?"

"I guess so, dear. He's raw and undeveloped, but like the rest of
creation he has his possibilities. You've seen him in his better moods
yourself. I always thought he kept his best side for you."

"I know," Anne said. She leaned slowly back, looking up into the kindly
eyes above he