d her own way. She didn't like living in a country
college town; there wasn't anything here to interest her. I won't tell
you all of Andrew's story, but it boils down to just this, that while
Edna was in New York studying music she got married without telling
where, or to whom. Andrew never saw her till she was dying in a
hospital and had a little girl with her,--that's Sylvia. Now, whether
there was any disgrace about it Andrew didn't know; and we owe it to
that dead woman and to Sylvia to believe it was all right. You see what
I mean, Daniel? Now that brings me down to what I want you to know.
Somebody has been keeping watch of Sylvia,--Andrew told me that."

She was thinking deeply as though pondering just how much more it was
necessary to tell him, and before she spoke she picked up the folded
paper and read it through carefully. "When Andrew got this it troubled
him a lot: the idea that somebody had an eye on the girl, and took
enough interest in her to do this, made him uneasy. Sylvia never knew
anything about it, of course; she doesn't know anything about anything,
and she won't ever need to."

"As I understand you, Mrs. Owen, you want some friend of hers to be in a
position to protect her if any one tries to harm her; you want to shield
her from any evil that might follow her from her mother's errors, if
they were indeed errors. We have no right to assume that she had done
anything to be ashamed of. That's the only just position for us to take
in such a matter."

"That's right, Daniel. I knew you'd see it that way. It looks bad, and
Andrew knew it looked bad; but at my age I ain't thinking evil of people
if I can help it. If a woman goes wrong, she pays for it--keeps on
paying after she's paid the whole mortgage. That's the blackest thing in
the world--that a woman never shakes a debt like that the way a man
can. You foreclose on a woman and take away everything she's got; put
her clean through bankruptcy, and the balance is still against her; but
we can't make over society and laws just sitting here talking about it.
I reckon Edna Kelton suffered enough. But we don't want Sylvia to
suffer. She's entitled to a happy life, and we don't want any shadows
hanging over her. Now that her grandpa's gone she can't go behind what
he told her,--poor man, he had trouble enough answering the questions
she had a right to ask; and he had to lie to her some."

"Yes; I suppose she will be content now; she will feel that what