her
understand you, Mr. Gideon. I am naturally acquainted with my daughter's
state better than any one else can be.'

'It gets on her nerves,' he muttered again. Then, after a moment of
silent hesitation, he half shrugged his shoulders, mumbled, 'Oh, well,'
and jerked away.

A strange person! Amazingly rude and ill-bred. To take upon himself to
warn me to take care of my own child! And _what_ did he mean 'got on her
nerves?' I really began to think he must be a little mad. But one thing
was apparent; his feeling towards Jane was, as I had long suspected, much
warmer than was right in the circumstances. He had, I made no doubt, come
from her just now.

I found Jane silent and unresponsive. She was not writing when I came in,
but sitting doing nothing. She said nothing to me about Mr. Gideon's
call, till I mentioned him myself. Then she seemed to stiffen a little; I
saw her hands clench over the arms of her chair.

'His manner was very strange,' I said. 'I couldn't help wondering if he
had been having anything.'

'If he was drunk, you mean,' said Jane. 'I dare say.'

'Then he _does_!' I cried, a little surprised.

Jane said not that she knew of. But every one did sometimes. Which was
just the disagreeable, cynical way of talking that I regret in her and
Johnny. As if she did not know numbers of straight, clean-living, decent
men and women who never had too much in their lives. But, anyhow, it
convinced me that Mr. Gideon _did_ drink too much, and that she knew it.

'He had been here, I suppose,' I said gently, because I didn't want to
seem stern.

'Yes,' said Jane, and that was all.

'My dear,' I said, after a moment, laying my hand on hers, 'is this man
worrying you ... with attentions?'

Jane laughed, an odd, hard laugh that I didn't like.

'Oh, no,' she said. 'Oh, dear no, mother.'

She got up and began to walk about the room.

'Never mind Arthur,' she said. 'I wouldn't let him get on my mind if I
were you, mother.... Let's talk about something else--baby, if you like.'

I perceived from this that Jane was really anxious to avoid discussion of
this man, for she did not as a rule encourage me to talk to her about the
little life which was coming, as we hoped, next spring. So I turned from
the subject of Arthur Gideon. But it remained on my mind.

3

You know how, sometimes, one wakes suddenly in the night with an
extraordinary access of clearness of vision, so that a dozen small things
which have