make a life? Could a
woman--come, face it without prejudice--could you see your own sister
marry him?" Mrs. Laithe looked blank.

"You see how impossible it is. You, yourself, could _you_ stand before
the world with him? Could you face the shame?"

The younger woman dropped the hand she held and turned away. The elder
regarded her shrewdly.

"There--you see how impossible----"

But the other faced her suddenly, clear-eyed and defiant, her head back.

"Eleanor!" It was a cry of consternation that was yet softened by
tenderness, an amazed but comprehending tenderness, for the face of the
younger woman was incarnadined, flagrantly, splendidly.

A moment they held each other. But there was no mistaking the thing,
for, though the blush had quickly faded, an after glow lingered.

The older woman rose quickly to throw her arms about the other.

"My mad, mad child!" She stood off to search her face incredulously.

"He's alone, Aunt Kitty, and he's so defenseless. He believes in
everyone more than in himself. He'll be cured of that some time, but
just now I'm his only defender. Others are against him or stand neutral
with talk of the 'world.' I can't blame you, dear, I think you must be
right for yourself. But when he does awaken"--she narrowed her eyes on
the other a moment in calculation--"then I shan't be ashamed to have him
know it was always safe to believe in me--whether he was boy or man or
no one at all--or less than no one. I'd never bother about names,
dear--I'd never bother about names."

She smiled and drew the other close with little reassuring caresses.
"You see names aren't much--the directory is full of them, and dreary
enough reading they'd make. No, I'd not care for that. I'd only ask that
he believe in himself as much as I believe in him, and care as little
for names. And I warn you I mean to help him to that if I can."

The eyes of the other sparkled now. There was in her glance the excited
admiration of a timid child who watches a reckless playmate dare some
dark passage of evil repute for goblins.

"You mad--dear mad girl!" she said.

CHAPTER XXI

THE DRAMA IN NINTH STREET

Ewing knew that his lady had come back. She had sent him a note the
first day: "I am dining to-night with an old friend. But come to-morrow
night."

The next day, while he was saying, "To-night I shall see her--actually
see her...." there had come another note in her careless, scrawled
writing: "I find, after