but I
thought her voice trembled a little when she spoke again. 'I don't quite
know _why_ I tell you all this. There was a time when I never could bear
the end of it myself,' she said; 'but I have begun, and I will finish
now. Well, Pepper's mistress went towards him, and called him;
but--whether he was still too dizzy to quite understand who she was, or
whether his pride came uppermost again, poor dear! I don't know--but he
gave her just one look (she says she will never forget it--never; it
went straight to her heart), and then he walked very slowly and
deliberately away.

'She couldn't bear it; she followed; she felt she simply _must_ make
him understand how very, very sorry she was for him; but the moment he
heard her he began to run faster and faster, until he was out of reach
and out of sight, and she had to come back. I know she was crying
bitterly by that time.'

'And he never came back again?' I asked, after a silence.

'Never again!' she said softly; 'that was the very last they ever saw or
heard of him. And--and I've always loved every dog since for Pepper's
sake!'

'I'm almost glad he did decline to come back,' I declared; 'it served
his mistress right--she didn't deserve anything else!'

'Ah, I didn't want you to say that!' she protested; 'she never meant to
be so unkind--it was all for the baby's sake!'

I was distinctly astonished, for all her sympathy in telling the story
had seemed to lie in the other direction.

'You don't mean to say,' I cried involuntarily, 'that you can find any
excuses for her? I did not expect _you_ would take the baby's part!'

'But I did,' she confessed, with lowered eyes--'I _did_ take the baby's
part--it was all my doing that Pepper was sent away--I have been sorry
enough for it since!'

It was her own story she had been telling at second-hand after all--and
she was not Miss So-and-so! I had entirely forgotten the existence of
any other members of the party but our two selves, but at the moment of
this discovery--which was doubly painful--I was recalled by a general
rustle to the fact that we were at a dinner-party, and that our hostess
had just given the signal.

As I rose and drew back my chair to allow my neighbour to pass, she
raised her eyes for a moment and said almost meekly:

'I _was_ the baby, you see!'

_MARJORY_

INTRODUCTION

I have thought myself justified in printing the following narrative,
found among the papers of my dead friend, Dou