se, I waited for her soundless anguish to subside;
then, when I thought she could listen, completed my sentence by saying:

"I did not allow my thoughts to stray quite so far, Mrs. Ocumpaugh. Not
till my knowledge of your secret promised to be of use did I let it rise
to any proportion in my mind. I had too much sympathy for your
difficulties; I have to-day."

This hint of comfort, perhaps from the only source which could afford
her any, seemed to move her.

"Do you mean that you are my friend?" she cried. "That you would help
me, if any help were possible, to keep my secret and--my husband's
love?"

I did not know how to dash the first spark of hope I had seen in her
from the beginning of this more than painful interview. To avoid it, I
temporized a trifle and answered with ready earnestness:

"I would do much, Mrs. Ocumpaugh, to make the consequences of your act
as ineffective as possible and still be true to the interests of Mr.
Ocumpaugh. If the child can be found--you wish that? You loved her?"

"O yes, I loved her." There was no mistaking the wistfulness of her
tone. "Too well, far too well; only my husband more."

"If you can find her--that is the first thing, isn't it?"

"Yes."

It was a faint rejoinder. I looked at her again.

"_You do not wish her found_," I suddenly declared.

She started, rose to her feet, then suddenly sat again as if she felt
that she could not stand.

"What makes you say that? How dare you? how can you say that? My husband
loves her, I love her--she is our own child, if not by birth, by every
tie which endears a child to a parent. Has that wicked man--"

"Doctor Pool!" I put in, for she stopped, gasping.

"Yes; Doctor Pool, whom I wish to God I had never seen--has he told you
any such lies as that? the man who swore--"

I put out my hand to calm her. I feared for her reason if not for her
life.

"Be careful," I enjoined. "Your walls are thick but tones like yours are
penetrating." Then as I saw she would be answered, I replied to the
question still alive in her face: "No; Doctor Pool has not talked of
you. I saw it in your own manner, madam; it or something else. Perhaps
it was something else--another secret which I have not shared."

She moistened her lips and, placing her two hands on the knobs of the
chair in which she sat, leaned passionately forward. Who could say she
was cold now? Who could see anything but a feeling heart in this woman,
beautiful beyond all pre