children.
While, however, I admit this, I doubt the conclusion which sees, in
inheritance of moral qualities, a positive influence exercised on moral
destiny. There are inherent emotional forces in humanity to which the
inherited influences must submit; they are essentially influences under
control--influences which can be encountered and forced back. That we,
who inhabit this little planet, may be the doomed creatures of fatality,
from the cradle to the grave, I am not prepared to dispute. But I
absolutely refuse to believe that it is a fatality with no higher
origin than can be found in our accidental obligation to our fathers and
mothers.

Still absorbed in these speculations, I was disturbed by a touch on my
arm.

I looked up. Eunice's eyes were fixed on a shrubbery, at some little
distance from us, which closed the view of the garden on that side. I
noticed that she was trembling. Nothing to alarm her was visible that I
could discover. I asked what she had seen to startle her. She pointed to
the shrubbery.

"Look again," she said.

This time I saw a woman's dress among the shrubs. The woman herself
appeared in a moment more. It was Helena. She carried a small portfolio,
and she approached us with a smile.

CHAPTER XLI. THE WHISPERING VOICE.

I looked at Eunice. She had risen, startled by her first suspicion of
the person who was approaching us through the shrubbery; but she kept
her place near me, only changing her position so as to avoid confronting
Helena. Her quickened breathing was all that told me of the effort she
was making to preserve her self-control. Entirely free from unbecoming
signs of hurry and agitation, Helena opened her business with me by
means of an apology.

"Pray excuse me for disturbing you. I am obliged to leave the house on
one of my tiresome domestic errands. If you will kindly permit it, I
wish to express, before I go, my very sincere regret for what I was rude
enough to say, when I last had the honor of seeing you. May I hope to
be forgiven? How-do-you-do, Eunice? Have you enjoyed your holiday in the
country?"

Eunice neither moved nor answered. Having some doubt of what might
happen if the two girls remained together, I proposed to Helena to leave
the garden and to let me hear what she had to say, in the house.

"Quite needless," she replied; "I shall not detain you for more than a
minute. Please look at this."

She offered to me the portfolio that she had been carry