them a great deal, but not--she
felt sure--not this, whatever it was.

"That's why we worried about him," said his son, his honest, distressed
eyes meeting hers. "You see--you see--we're in trouble at the house--my
mother--my mother left us, last night--"

"Dead?" whispered Anne.

"She's been ill a good while," said the young man, "but we
thought--She's been so ill before! A day or two ago the rest of us knew
it, and we wired for my married sister, but we couldn't get dad to
realize it. He never left her, and he's not been eating, and he'd tell
all the doctors what serious sicknesses she'd gotten over before--" And
with a suddenly shaking lip and filling eyes, he turned his back on
Anne, and went to the window.

"Ah!" said Anne, pitifully. And for a full moment there was silence.

Then Charles Rideout, the younger, came back to her, pushing his
handkerchief into his coat pocket; and with a restored self-control.

"Too bad to bother you with our troubles," he said, with a little smile
like his father's. "To us, of course, it seems like the end of the
world, but I am sorry to distress YOU! Dad just doesn't seem to grasp
it, he hasn't been excited, you know, but he doesn't seem to
understand. I don't know that any of us do!" he finished simply.

"Here they are!" Anne said warningly, as the two other men came down
the stairs.

"Hello, Dad!" said young Rideout, easily and cheerfully, "I came to
bring you home!"

"This is MY boy, Mrs. Warriner," said his father; "you see he's turned
the tables, and is looking after me! I'm glad you came, Charley. I've
been telling your good husband, Mrs. Warriner," he said, in a lower
tone, "that we--that I--"

"Yes, I know!" Anne said, with her ready tenderness, and a little gasp
like a child's.

"So you will realize what impulse brought me here to-day," the older
man went on; "I was talking to my wife of this house only a day or two
ago." His voice had become almost inaudible, and the three young people
knew he had forgotten them. "Only a day or two ago," he repeated
musingly. And then, to his son, he added wistfully, "I don't seem to
get it through my head, my boy. For a while to-day, I forgot--I forgot.
The heart--" he said, with his little old-world touch of dignity--"the
heart does not learn things as quickly as the mind, Mrs. Warriner."

Anne had found something wistful and appealing in his smile before, now
it seemed to her heartbreaking. She nodded, without speaking.