"What have you been doing to my child?" he heard from Mother Mary, presently. He studied her face again and saw that she was trying to reckon with him herself, although he knew that it mattered little what she thought or did on the whole.

"Has she told you what I have been doing to her?" he said. She shifted uncomfortably, looked around a little, listened for a sound that she expected to hear sooner or later, and then replied, and in doing so, he saw that she was again subservient to the old training.

"My husband told me," she countered.

"Oh," he echoed.

"You have not acted with discretion," she said again, and he understood her. Acting with "discretion" would been never to have given the Reverend an excuse for making that trip....

"I have been good to your daughter; a husband to the best of my ability."

"But you—you—should not have blundered." Again he was reminded of what it meant to displease or give her husband any excuse.

"I did not agree in this room a year ago to be regardful of the opinion of others," he defended. "I agreed to the word of the law and of God. I have tried to fulfill that word. I did not intend to be absent when the child came." She shifted again uneasily, and her mind went back to the day Orlean was born and that her husband, too, had been away....

"If I can see Orlean that will be sufficient," he said.

"She went to walk."

"Mother?"

She regarded him again, and then turned her eyes away for she could not stand to look long into his. The truth there would upset her and she knew it.

"Why must this be so?" She shifted uneasily again. Oh, if she could only be brave. If she could only dare—but she was not brave, Orlean was not brave. They had lived their lives too long subservient to the will of others to attempt bravery now. She rested her eyes on some sewing she pretended to do and waited. It could only be for a little while. Ethel must learn sooner or later of his presence, and then—! There would be a scene or he must go.

"It's a shame," said the other.

"You should have been careful," she returned meaningly. But in her mind was still the dream. If she could be brave....

"Mother!" called some one sharply. Jean recognized the voice, the command. The other's face went pale for a moment, while her eyes closed. He understood. The worst had come. In the minutes they had been sitting there, she had almost dared hope that Orlean would return, and that in some way—perhaps it would have to come from heaven—they could fly. But chances now were gone. His cohort had appeared. "Who is it out there?" she asked, and came toward where they sat. She saw him then, and regarded him coldly. Through her mind shot the fact that her father had waited three weeks for him, and had just left that morning. Her disappointment was keen. For a moment she was frightened. In truth she held a fearsome admiration for the man, and then she stiffened. She had come back to herself; to the fact that she had a reputation for being disagreeable. She turned to him, and said: