he merely said, "Well, I am glad he is one of those who grow more
liberal as they grow older. That is a good sign for your happiness. But
I dare say it's more of his happiness you think."

"Oh, I should like to be happy, too. There would be no sense in it if I
wasn't."

"No, certainly not."

"Miss Milray," said Clementina, with a kind of abruptness, "do you eva
hear anything from Dr. Welwright?"

"No! Why?" Miss Milray fastened her gaze vividly upon her.

"Oh, nothing. He wanted me to promise him, there in Venice, too."

"I didn't know it."

"Yes. But--I couldn't, then. And now--he's written to me. He wants me to
let him come ova, and see me."

"And--and will you?" asked Miss Milray, rather breathlessly.

"I don't know. I don't know as I'd ought. I should like to see him,
so as to be puffectly su'a. But if I let him come, and then didn't--It
wouldn't be right! I always felt as if I'd ought to have seen then
that he ca'ed for me, and stopped him; but I didn't. No, I didn't," she
repeated, nervously. "I respected him, and I liked him; but I neva"--She
stopped, and then she asked, "What do you think I'd ought to do, Miss
Milray?"

Miss Milray hesitated. She was thinking superficially that she had never
heard Clementina say had ought, so much, if ever before. Interiorly she
was recurring to a sense of something like all this before, and to the
feeling which she had then that Clementina was really cold-blooded and
self-seeking. But she remembered that in her former decision, Clementina
had finally acted from her heart and her conscience, and she rose from
her suspicion with a rebound. She dismissed as unworthy of Clementina
any theory which did not account for an ideal of scrupulous and
unselfish justice in her.

"That is something that nobody can say but yourself, Clementina," she
answered, gravely.

"Yes," sighed Clementina, "I presume that is so."

She rose, and took her little girl from Miss Milray's knee. "Say
good-bye," she bade, looking tenderly down at her.

Miss Milray expected the child to put up her lips to be kissed. But she
let go her mother's hand, took her tiny skirts between her finger-tips,
and dropped a curtsey.

"You little witch!" cried Miss Milray. "I want a hug," and she crushed
her to her breast, while the child twisted her face round and anxiously
questioned her mother's for her approval. "Tell her it's all right,
Clementina!" cried Miss Milray. "When she's as old as you were in
Fl