nda gazed up at Truedale as if confessing and, at the
end, seeking forgiveness.

"Of course you do!" he comforted, "but--be brave, Lyn!" He feared to
excite Ann. Then the weary eyes of the child turned to him.

"Mommy-Lyn does love me!" the weak voice was barely audible; "she does,
father, she does!"

It was like a confirmation--a recognition of something beautiful and
sacred.

"I felt," Lynda said afterward to Betty, "as if she were not only
telling Con, but God, too. I had not deserved it--but it made up for all
the hard struggle, and swept everything before it."

But Ann did not die. Slowly, almost hesitatingly, she turned back to
them and brought a new power with her. She, apparently, left her baby
looks and nature in the shadowy place from which she had escaped. Once
health came to her, she was the merriest of merry children--almost noisy
at times--in the rollicking fashion of Betty's irrepressible Bobilink.
And the haunting likeness to Truedale was gone. For a year or two the
lean, thready little girl looked like no one but her own elfish self;
and then--it was like a revealment--she grew to be like Nella-Rose!

Lynda, at times, was breathless as she looked and remembered. She had
seen the mother only once; but that hour had burned the image of face,
form, and action into her soul. She recalled, too, Conning's graphic
description of his first meeting with Nella-Rose. The quaint, dramatic
power that had marked Ann's mother, now developed in the little
daughter. She had almost entirely lost the lingering manner of
speech--the Southern expressions and words--but she was as different
from the children with whom she mingled as she had ever been.

When she was strong enough she resumed her studies with the governess
and also began music. This she enjoyed with the passion that marked her
attitude toward any person or thing she loved.

"Oh, it lets something in me, free!" she confided to Truedale. "I shall
never be naughty or unkind again--I wouldn't dare!"

"Why?" Conning was no devotee of music and was puzzled by Ann's
intensity.

"Why," she replied, puckering her brows in the effort to make herself
clear, "I--I wouldn't be worthy of--of the beautiful music, if I were
horrid."

Truedale laughed and patted her pretty cropped head, over which the new
little curls were clustering.

Life in the old house was full and rich at that time. Conning was, as he
often said, respectably busy and important enough in th