some
return for all the trouble she has been to you."

"She forgets everything," said the step-mother, "and we are thankful
for it. Bob hates the thought; it is hard on him, who is so different.
Don't allude to it before him, please; he feels it too keenly. Debbie,
what did you think of my boy?" "Oh, splendid!" was the cordial
response. "I could hardly believe my eyes."

"Is he not?" the fond mother urged. "And it is not only his appearance,
Debbie--they say he is the cleverest lawyer in Melbourne. He is so
learned, so acute! He has a practice already that many a barrister,
well known and of twice his age, might envy."

The pale woman--for her bricky colour had faded out--thrilled and
glowed.

"Yes, he told me," said Deb; "and it was good hearing indeed. But I
always knew what he had in him.' To herself she said: 'Why, if he is so
well off, does he let her live like this?"

Poverty--though decent poverty--proclaimed itself in every detail of
the mean terrace-house, which stood in the most depressing street
imaginable. It made the wealthy sister's heart ache.

"And how are you yourself, Debbie?" Mary remembered to ask, as she shut
the door upon the departing carriage. "You look well. How is Francie?
We want you to tell us all about her grand doings. Bob is greatly
interested in his Italian aunt; he thinks he would like to take a
vacation trip to see her some day. By the way, did he tell you that
Rose has another? Isn't she a perfect little rabbit? And quite
delighted, Keziah says."

As she talked in this detachment from her personal affairs, she led the
way up bare stairs to her small bedroom. The resplendent woman behind
her took note of the widow's excessive thinness, the greyness of her
straight, tight hair, the rigid lines of a black stuff gown that had
not a scrap of trimming on it--not even the lawn sleeve-bands widows
use--and thought of Bennet Goldsworthy's old-time annoyance when his
wife was proved to have fallen behind the mode. And as she expatiated
upon the charms of Rose's eleventh baby, Deb's bright dark eyes roved
about Mary's room, in which she recognised a few of the plainer
furnishings of the nuptial chamber of the past.

But not a trace of the person who had been so much amongst them once.
His boots on the floor, his clothes on the door-pegs, his razors and
brushes on the toilet-table were gone; so were a basin and ewer from
the double wash-stand; so was the wide bed. In place of the latter