s
duties as host.

He had, indeed, conducted himself admirably ever since Mrs. Lee's
arrival, though he had been very quiet and reserved at first. With some
trepidation, she had told him that she had invited the guest to remain
indefinitely, tactfully choosing a moment after an unusually good
dinner, when they chanced to be alone.

Alden had taken it calmly, betraying no outward sign of any sort of
emotion. "What's the matter with her?" he had asked, curiously. "What's
she in trouble about?"

"If she wants you to know, my son, she will tell you herself," Madame
had replied, in a tone of gentle rebuke. "I have no right to violate her
confidence."

He shrugged his shoulders good-humouredly. "You don't need to squelch me
like that, Mother. I don't know that I care, particularly. I was merely
making conversation."

"Refined conversation is not made of impertinences," Madame suggested.
The words were harsh, but the tone was kind.

"Don't stab me with epigrams, please, for I don't believe I deserve
it."

[Sidenote: Dream-Children]

Madame recalled every word they had said as she took down her afternoon
gown of black silk, and began to sew frills of real lace in the neck and
sleeves. She was glad he had been pleasant about it, for it seemed much
more like living, someway, to have another woman in the house.

If Virginia had lived--she, too, had brown eyes, but her hair was brown
also. She would have been four years older than Edith was now, and,
undoubtedly, married. All Madame's feminine ancestors for generations
back had been married. The only spinster in the family, so far as Madame
knew, had remained true to the memory of a dead lover.

"Some women are born to be married, some achieve marriage, and others
have marriage thrust upon them," Madame said to herself, unconsciously
paraphrasing an old saying. Virginia would have been meant for it, too,
and, by now, there would have been children in the old house, pattering
back and forth upon the stairs, lisping words that meant no more than
the bubbling of a fountain, and stretching up tiny hands that looked
like crumpled rose-petals, pleading to be taken up and loved.

These dream-children tugged strangely at the old lady's heart-strings in
her moments of reverie. Even yet, after Rosemary came--but they would
not be like her own flesh and blood, as a daughter's children always
are. Poor Rosemary! How miserable she was at home, and how little she
would need to mak