parted. Ewing turned from her distress, appealing by look to the
big man, who watched them both, but his gaze was at once drawn back to
the woman. She rose from her chair with weak effort and faced him with
something like wild impulse rather than intention, a look, a waiting
poise, that shook him with fear of the unknown.

Slowly she brought her hands to a wringing clasp at her breast. Her
eyes were frankly wet now as she leaned and peered at him, holding him
immovable. Twice her lips parted with dry little gasps, her hands
working as if to ring the words from her choked throat.

"My boy!" It was so low that without the look of her lips as they shaped
the words he could not have been sure.

"My boy--oh, my boy!" This time they were sharper though no louder, and
Ewing's nerves tingled an alarm that ran to the roots of his hair. She
came a half step toward him, and he felt that he was drawing her,
divined that in another moment she would be throwing herself upon him in
surrender to some emotional torrent that raged within her. He was
powerless under this sudden, strange assault. Dumbly he watched her,
closer now by another step, the clasped hands, fighting blindly toward
him, with little retreats to her breast, her dry lips again shaping the
words, "My boy--my boy!"

And then, even as his own arms were half extended with an instinctive
saving movement--for the woman seemed about to totter--the stillness was
broken by quick steps along the hall, the rattle of curtain rings along
a rod, and the voice of the maid:

"Mr. Teevan, ma'am!"

There had been an instinctive wrenching asunder of the three at the
first sound of steps. Yet traces of the stress under which they had
labored were still evident to Randall Teevan as he entered. Mrs. Lowndes
had turned to search among the magazines on the table--not before the
little man had swept her with a comprehending eye flash.

Ewing, pleasantly delivered from a situation that had grown irksome, a
situation rising from what he considered the too-ready sympathy of an
emotional old woman, allowed his relief full play in the heartiness of
his response to Teevan's greeting. The doctor had squared his shoulders
to another pacing of the room.

Teevan, missing no item of the drama he had interrupted, chose for
himself the role of blind unconsciousness. So well did he enact this
that Mrs. Lowndes was convinced, and the belief aided her to recover a
proper equanimity. The doctor survey