all other charges except that of desertion.
Thus Dicky was saved a scandal which would have followed and hampered
him all his life, and I was spared the fastening of a shameful verdict
upon me. Of course, everybody who read about the case and did not know
me, believed me guilty anyway, but my friends stood by me gallantly,
and that part of it is all right. But every time I look at that baby
face I am tempted to wish that I had let honor, the righting of Dicky,
everything go by the boards, and had taken my chance of having her,
even if it were only part of the time."

Her voice was rough, uneven as she finished speaking, but that was the
only evidence of the emotion which I knew must have her stretched upon
the rack.

Right there I capitulated to Lillian Underwood. Always, through my
dislike and distrust of her, there had struggled an admiration which
would not down, even when I thought I had most cause to fear her.

But this revelation of the real bigness of the woman caught my
allegiance and fixed it. She had sacrificed the thing which was most
precious to her to keep her ideal of honor unsullied. I felt that I
could never have made a similar sacrifice, but I mentally saluted her
for her power to do it.

I realized, too, the reason for Dicky's deference to Mrs. Underwood,
which had often puzzled and sometimes angered me. Once when she had
given him a raking over for the temper he displayed toward me in her
presence, he had said:

"You know I couldn't get angry at you, no matter what you said; I owe
you too much."

I had wondered at the time what it was that my husband "owed" Mrs.
Underwood. The riddle was solved for me at last.

I am not an impetuous woman, and I do not know how I ever mustered
up courage to do it. But the sight of Lillian Underwood's face as
she looked at her baby's picture was too much for me. Without any
conscious volition on my part I found my arms around her, and her face
pressed against my shoulder.

I expected a storm of grief, for I knew the woman had been holding
herself in with an iron hand. But only a few convulsive movements of
her shoulders betrayed her emotion and when she raised her face to
mine her eyes were less tear-bedewed than my own.

Something stirred me to quick questioning.

"Oh, is there a chance of your having her again?"

"I am always hoping for it," she answered quietly. "When her father
married again, several years ago--that was before my marriage to
Harry--