etray me!"

"Chris," she responded, warmly, "as if I could!"

He watched her eating her breakfast, and chatting with Alice, a little
later, and told himself that some of Annie's splendid courage had
certainly descended to this gallant little daughter. Norma was pale, and
now and then her eyes would meet his with a certain strained look, or
she would lose the thread of the conversation for a few seconds, but
that was all. Alice noticed nothing, and in a day or two Chris could
easily have convinced himself that the conversation in the spring
greenness of the Sunday morning had been a dream.

CHAPTER XVII

However, that hour had borne fruit, and in two separate ways had had its
distinct effect upon Norma's mind and soul. In the first place, she had
a secret now with Chris, and understanding that made her most casual
glance at him significant, and gave a double meaning to almost every
word they exchanged. It was at his suggestion that she decided to keep
the revelation from Alice, even though she knew what Alice knew, for
Alice was not very well, and Chris was sure that it would only agitate
and frighten the invalid to feel that the family's discreditable secret
was just that much nearer betrayal. So she and Chris alone shared the
agitation, strain, and bewilderment of the almost overwhelming
discovery; and Norma, in turning to him for advice and sympathy,
deepened tenfold the tie between them.

But even this result was not so far-reaching as the less-obvious effect
of the discovery upon her character. Everything that was romantic,
undisciplined, and reckless in Norma was fostered by the thought that so
thrilling and so secret a history united her closely to the Melrose
family. That she was Leslie's actual cousin, that the closest of all
human relationships bound her to the magnificent Mrs. von Behrens, were
thoughts that excited in her every dramatic and extravagant tendency to
which the amazing year had inclined _her_. With her growing ease in her
changed environment, and the growing popularity she enjoyed there, came
also a sense of predestination, the conviction that her extraordinary
history justified her in any act of daring or of unconventionality.
There was nothing to be gained by self-control or sanity, Norma might
tell herself, at least for those of the Melrose blood.

Her shyness of the season before had vanished, and she could plunge into
the summer gaiety with an assurance that amazed even herself