you as long as I live.
But--I think I ought to say it, even if it's a cold rough thing to say.
I don't believe I'm ever going to feel the same way about you, and
so----"

"Oh, I know that, but---- Oh, do you still think I'm pretty?"

"_Indeed_ I do. I've always thought that. Always known that."

"Well," she said, speaking very bravely but with a mouth that quivered,
"that's something. I don't lead a very full life, but that's
something."

XX

"Mother, are you very busy with those letters?"

"Yes, dear, very."

"I thought so; so put them down and come into the garden. There is a
bench where the thyme and eglantine----"

"My dear, you frighten me. What has happened?"

My mother rose, one hand on her bosom.

"Nothing to be frightened about. It's only a little tragedy in a life
that isn't very full. Come and talk it over."

I gave her my arm and we strolled into the garden like a pair of lovers.

"Do you remember when Hilda came to us?"

"Perfectly."

"I said to you on that day, 'Mother, the new maid is as pretty as a
picture.' Do you remember?"

"No."

"Well, I said it, and Hilda heard me say it, and please don't laugh, it
seems that my saying it made the poor child--Oh, care about me. She's
cared ever since, and I'm afraid she cares a whole lot."

"How did you get to know?"

"She told me, this morning, practically out of a clear sky. One thing
I want to make clear is that it's just as little my fault as it
possibly can be. I feel like the devil about it, but I can't for the
life of me find one little hook to hang a shred of self-reproach on.
My morals aren't what they should be. But I am a fastidious man, and
the roof under which my mother lives is to me as the roof of a temple.
But you know all this. Now what's to be done? One thing is clear, I
can't and won't be amorously waited on. I think the poor child will
have to be sent away."

"Oh, dear!" cried my mother, "and just when she's getting to be a
perfect servant, and your father so used to her now--says he never
knows when she's in the room and when she isn't."

We returned to the house.

"I'll talk it over with her," announced my mother, "and try to decide
what's best--best for her, the poor, pretty little thing."

You may be sure that that meeting in the little room where my mother
wrote her letters was no meeting between a mistress and a servant, but
between two honest women who in different ways loved the same ma