might notice my hat and coat; but you did not--you only said: 'What
would I do if I woke up some night and didn't have a mother?' Lyn, dear,
I went back and--stayed!"

Lynda had thought her mother's mind wandering so she patted the seeking
hands and murmured gently to her. Then, suddenly:

"Lyn, when I married your father I thought I loved him--but I loved
another! I've done the best I could for you all; I never let any one
know; I dared not give a sign, but I want you--by and by--to go
to--William Truedale! You need not explain--just go; you will be my gift
to him--my last and only gift."

Startled and horrified, Lynda had listened, understood, and grown old
while her mother spoke....

Then came the night when she awoke--and found no mother! She was never
the same. She returned to school but gave up the idea of going to
college. After her graduation she made a home for the father who now--in
the light of her secret knowledge--she comprehended for the first time.
All her life she had wondered about him. Wondered why she and Brace had
not loved and honoured him as they had their mother. His weakness, his
superficiality, had been dominated by the wife who, having accepted her
lot, carried her burden proudly to the end!

Brace went to college and, during his last year there, his father died;
then, confronting a future rich in debts but little else, he and Lynda
consequently turned their education to account and were soon
self-supporting, full of hope and the young joy of life.

Lynda--her mother's secret buried deep in her loyal, tender heart--began
soon after her return from school to cultivate old William Truedale,
much to that crabbed gentleman's surprise and apparent confusion. There
was some excuse for the sudden friendship, for Brace during preparatory
school and college had formed a deep and sincere attachment for Conning
Truedale and at vacation time the two boys and Lynda were much together.
To be sure the visiting was largely one-sided, as the gloomy house of
the elder Truedale offered small inducement for sociability; but Lynda
managed to wedge her way into the loneliness and dreariness and
eventually for reasons best known to herself became the one bright thing
in the old man's existence.

And so the years had drifted on. Besides Lynda's determination to prove
herself as her mother had directed, she soon decided to set matters
straight between the uncle and the nephew. To her ardent young soul,
fired wi