Then Regina came in with a note for Norma, who read it, and turned to
her aunt.

"It's Chris--he wants very much to see you before you go away," she
said. "I wonder if you would ask Mr. Liggett to come in here, Regina?"
But five minutes later, when Chris came in, he looked so ill that she
was quick to spare him. "Chris, wouldn't to-morrow do--you look so
tired!"

"I _am_ tired," Chris said, after quietly accepting Mrs. Sheridan's
murmured condolence, with his hand holding hers, as if he liked the big,
sympathetic woman. "But I want this off my mind before I see Judge Lee!
You are right, Mrs. Sheridan," he said, with a sort of boyish gruffness,
not yet releasing her hands, "my wife was an angel. I always knew
it--but I wish I could tell her so just once more!"

"Ah, that's the very hardest thing about death," Mrs. Sheridan said,
sitting down, and quite frankly wiping from her eyes the tears that
sympathy for his sorrow had made spring again. "We'd always want one
more hour!"

"But Norma perhaps has told you----?" Chris said, in a different tone.
"Told you of the--the remarkable talk we had yesterday--with my poor
mother-in-law----"

Kate Sheridan nodded gravely.

"Yes," she answered, almost reluctantly, "Norma is Theodore Melrose's
child. I have letters--all their letters. I knew her mother, that was
Louison Courtot, well. It was a mixed-up business--but you've got the
whole truth at last. I've lost more than one night's sleep over my share
of it, Mr. Liggett, thinking who this child was, and whether I had the
right to hold my tongue.

"I was a widow when I went to Germany with Mrs. Melrose. She begged and
begged me to, for she was sick with worry about Miss Annie. Miss Annie
had been over there about eight months, and something she'd written had
made her mother feel that she was ill, or in trouble. Well, I didn't
want to leave my own children, but she coaxed me so hard that I went. We
sailed without cabling, and went straight to Leipsic, and to the
dreadful, dreary pension that Miss Annie was in--a dismal, lonely place.
She came downstairs to see her mother, and I'll never forget the scream
she gave, for she'd had no warning, poor child, and Mueller had taken all
her money, and she was--well, we could see how she was. She began
laughing and crying, and her mother did, too, but Mrs. Melrose stopped
after a few minutes, and we couldn't stop Miss Annie at all. She
shrieked and sobbed and strangled until we saw s