s a cousinship somewhere," he said,
sensibly. "There's no reason to suppose that the thing can't be
explained. I do think you're taking this thing pretty hard, my dear.
What can you possibly suppose? There might be a hundred girls----"

His voice fell. Alice was watching him expectantly.

"Mama felt it--saw it--as I do," she said. "You may be very sure that
Mama wouldn't have almost lost her mind, as she did, unless something
had given her cause!"

They looked at each other in silence, in the utter silence of the
lovely, cool-toned room.

"Alice," Chris said in a puzzled voice after awhile, "you suspect me of
keeping something from you. But on my honour you know all that your
mother told me--all that I know!"

"Oh, Chris," she said, with a sort of wail. "If I don't know more!"

Her husband's slow colour rose.

"How could you know more?" he asked, bewilderedly.

Alice was unhappily silent.

"Chris, if I tell you what I'm afraid of--what I fear," she said,
presently, after anxious thought, "will you promise me never, never to
speak of it--never even to think of it!--if it--if it proves not to be
true?"

"I don't have to tell you that, Alice," he said.

"No, of course you don't--of course you don't!" she echoed with a
nervous laugh. "I'll tell you what I think, Chris--what has been almost
driving me mad--and you can probably tell me a thousand reasons why it
can't be so! You see, I've never understood Mama's feverish distress
these last weeks. She's been to see me, she's done what had to be done
about Leslie's engagement, but she's not herself--you can see that!
Yesterday she began to cry, almost for nothing, and when I happened to
mention--or rather when I mentioned very deliberately--that Miss
Sheridan was coming here, she almost shrieked. Well, I didn't know what
to make of it, and even then I rather wondered----

"Even then," Alice began again, after a painful pause, and with her own
voice rising uncontrollably, "I suspected something. But not this! Oh,
Chris, if I'm wrong about this, I shall be on my knees for gratitude for
the rest of my life; I would die, I would die to have it just--just my
wretched imagination!--A thing like this--to us--the Melroses--who have
always been so straight--so respected!"

"Now, Alice--now, Alice!"

"Yes, I know!" she said, quickly. "I know!" And for a moment she lay
back quietly, stroking his hand. "Chris," she resumed, composedly, after
a moment, "you know the traged