propped by cushions.

Mary Goddard had spent a miserable day. The grey morning light seemed to
reveal her troubles and fears in a new and more terrible aspect. During
the long hours of darkness it seemed as though those things were
mercifully hidden which the strong glare of day must inevitably reveal,
and when the night was fairly past she thought all the world must surely
know that Walter Goddard had escaped and that his wife had seen him.
Hourly she expected a ringing at the bell, announcing the visit of a
party of detectives on his track; every sound startled her and her nerves
were strung to such a pitch that she heard with supernatural acuteness.
She had indeed two separate causes for fear. The one was due to her
anxiety for Goddard's safety; the other to her apprehensions for Nellie.
She had long determined that at all hazards the child must be kept from
the knowledge of her father's disgrace, by being made to believe in his
death. It was a falsehood indeed, but such a falsehood as may surely be
forgiven to a woman as unhappy as Mary Goddard. It seemed monstrous that
the innocent child, who seemed not even to have inherited her father's
looks or temper, should be brought up with the perpetual sense of her
disgrace before her, should be forced to listen to explanations of her
father's crimes and tutored to the comprehension of an inherited shame.
From the first Mary Goddard had concealed the whole matter from the
little girl, and when Walter was at last convicted, she had told her that
her father was dead. Dead he might be, she thought, before twelve years
were out, and Nellie would be none the wiser. In twelve years from the
time of his conviction Nellie would be in her twenty-first year; if it
were ever necessary to tell her, it would be time enough then, for the
girl would have at least enjoyed her youth, free of care and of the
horrible consciousness of a great crime hanging over her head. No child
could grow up in such a state as that implied. No mind could develop
healthily under the perpetual pressure of so hideous a secret; from her
earliest childhood her impressions would be warped, her imagination
darkened and her mental growth stunted. It would be a great cruelty to
tell her the truth; it was a great mercy to tell her the falsehood. It
was no selfish timidity which had prompted Mary Goddard, but a carefully
weighed consideration for the welfare of her child.

If now, within these twenty-four hours, Nel