und here for his honeymoon;
and I'm glad, on the whole."

"On the whole? When you've dreamed, all this while, of seeing your
uncle and growing up to be like him!"

"I mean that on the whole I'm glad he is married. It--it shows the two
things can go together after all; and, Ruth--"

She turned in some wonderment as his voice faltered, and wondered more
at sight of his young face. It was crimson.

"No, please! I want you not to look," he entreated. "I want you to turn
your face away and listen . . . Ruth," he blurted, "I love you better
than anybody in the whole world!"

"Dear Dicky!"

"--and I think you're the loveliest person that ever was--besides being
the best."

"It's lovely of you, at any rate, to think so." Ruth, forgetting his
command, turned her eyes again on Dicky, and they were dewy. For indeed
she loved him and his boyish chivalrous ways. Had he not been her
friend from the first, taking her in perfect trust, and in the hour that
had branded her and in her dreams seared her yet? Often, yet, in the
mid-watches of the night she started out of sleep and lay quivering
along her exquisite body from head to heel, while the awful writing
awoke and crawled and ate again, etching itself upon her flesh.

"But--but it made me miserable!" choked Dicky.

"Miserable! Why?"

"Because I wanted to grow up and marry you," he managed to say
defiantly. "And the two things didn't seem to fit at all. I couldn't
make them fit. But of course," he went on in a cheerfuller voice, the
worst of his confession over, "if Uncle Harry can be married, why
shouldn't we?"

She bent her head low over the book. Calf-love is absurd, but so
honest, so serious; and like all other sweet natural foolishness should
be sacred to the pure of heart.

"I ought to tell you something though," he went on gravely and
hesitated.

"Yes, Dicky! What is it?"

"Well, I don't quite know what it means, and I don't like to ask any one
else. Perhaps you can tell me. . . . I wouldn't ask it if it weren't
that I'd hate to take you in; or if I could find out any other way."

"But what is it, dear?"

"Something against me. I can't tell what, though I've looked at myself
again and again in the glass, trying." He met her eyes bravely, with an
effort. "Ruth, dear--what is a bastard?"

Ruth sat still. Her palms were folded, one upon another, over the book
on her knees.

"But what is it?" he pleaded.

"It means," she said quietly, "a