if you dare to
ask me that--" He turned to the grandmother, dropped to his knees,
buried his face in her lap and sobbed.

With genuine tenderness she stroked his locks. Yet while she did so she
lifted to the sister a face lighted up with a mirth of deliverance. To
nod, toss, and nod again, was poor show for her glee; she smirked and
writhed to the disdaining girl like a child at a mirror, and, though
sitting thus confined, gave all the effects of jigging over the floor.
Hilary out of the way! Kincaid eliminated, and the whole question free
of him, this inheritance question so small and mean to all but her and
Irby, but to him and her so large, so paramount! Silently, but plainly
to the girl, her mouth widely motioned, "Il est mort! grace"--one hand
stopped stroking long enough to make merrily the sign of cross--"grace
au ciel, il est mort!"

No moment of equal bitterness had Flora Valcour ever known. To tell half
her distresses would lose us in their tangle, midmost in which was a
choking fury against the man whom unwillingly she loved, for escaping
her, even by a glorious death. One thought alone--that Anna, as truly as
if stricken blind, would sit in darkness the rest of her days--lightened
her torture, and with that thought she smiled a stony loathing on the
mincing grandam and the boy's unlifted head. Suddenly, purpose gleamed
from her. She could not break forth herself, but to escape suffocation
she must and would procure an outburst somewhere. Measuredly, but with
every nerve and tendon overstrung, she began to pace the room.

"Don't cry, Charlie," she smoothly said in a voice as cold as the crawl
of a snake. The brother knew the tone, had known it from childhood, and
the girl, glancing back on him, was pleased to see him stiffen. A few
steps on she added pensively, "For a soldier to cry--and befo' ladies--a
ladies' man--of that batt'rie--tha's hardly fair--to the ladies, eh,
grandmama?"

But the boy only pressed his forehead harder down and clutched the aged
knees under it till their owner put on, to the scintillant beauty, a
look of alarm and warning. The girl, musingly retracing her calculated
steps to where the kneeler seemed to clinch himself to his posture,
halted, stroked with her slippered toe a sole of his rude shoes and
spoke once more: "Do they oft-ten boohoo like that, grandma, those
artillerie?"

The boy whirled up with the old woman clinging. A stream of oaths and
curses appallingly original po