nt, you
will be glad, I'm sure--this is Desire. Desire, this is your new Aunt."

"How do you do?" said Desire. "I have never had an Aunt before."

It was the one thing which she should have said. Had she known Aunt
Caroline for years she could not have done better. But, unfortunately,
that admirable lady did not hear it. She had heard nothing since the
shattering blow of the word "wife."

"John," she said hoarsely. "Take me away. Take me away at once!"

"Certainly," said John, "Only it's frightfully damp in the woods. And
there may be bears."

"Bears or not. I can't stay here."

"Oh, but you must," Desire came forward with innocent hospitality. "You
can sleep on my cot and I'll curl up in a blanket. I am quite used to
sleeping out."

Aunt Caroline closed her eyes. It was true then. Benis Spence had
married a squaw! Blindly she groped for the supporting hand of the
doctor. "John," she moaned, "did you hear that? Sleeping out--oh how
could he?"

"Very easily, I should think." Under the slight handicap of assisting
the drooping lady to her chair, John Rogers looked back at Desire,
standing now within the radius of the camp fire's light--and once again
he felt the strangeness as of some half-glimpsed prophecy. "She is
wonderful," he added. "Look!"

Aunt Caroline looked, shuddered, and collapsed again upon a whispered
"Indian!"

"Nonsense!" Rogers almost shook her. And yet, considering the
suggestive force of the poor lady's preconceived ideas, the mistake was
not unpardonable. In those surroundings, against that flickering light,
standing, straight and silent in her short skirt and moccasins, her
leaf-brown hair tied with bracken and turned to midnight black by the
shadows, her grey eyes mysterious under their dark lashes, and her lips
unsmiling, Desire might well have been some beauty of that vanishing
race. A princess, perhaps, waiting with grave courtesy for the welcome
due her from her husband's people.

"And not a bit ashamed of it," murmured Aunt Caroline in what she
fondly hoped was a whisper. "Utterly callous! Benis," in a wavering
voice, "I had a feeling--"

"Wait!" interrupted Benis, producing a notebook and pencil. "Let us be
exact, Aunt. Just when did you notice the feeling first?"

"What difference does that make?" Aunt Caroline's voice was perceptibly
stronger.

"Why," eagerly, "don't you see? If you had the feeling at the time
(allowing for difference by the sun) it is a case of actual
cla