It was on that occasion Jamie confided in me. He told me his decision to return to England was not wholly influenced by his publishers, but because of his interest in Bess Stanley who, he had heard, was seen a good deal in the company of a distant cousin of my husband's--another Gordon Ewart, named from his father from whom my Gordon bought the manor and seigniory of Lamoral. He discerned that the only wise thing for him was to be on the spot, "to head the other off" as he put it. "If I can be only one half day with Bess now and then, I can make her forget every other man," he declared solemnly. I laughed inwardly, but I knew he spoke the truth. Jamie Macleod is fascination itself when he exerts himself. "I am going to win, you know, in the end," he said. "Another Ewart shan't cut me out again--" He spoke mischievously, audaciously. "Oh, you big fraud! It's well I understand you." "And I, you, Marcia--I 'll cable." "Do, that's a dear. I shall be so anxious." Yesterday I received the cablegram; Jamie has won. I can't help wondering about those other "Gordon Ewarts", distant cousins of my husband. Can it be?-- No, no! I will not even speculate. That past is forever laid, thank God. I write "forever"--but perhaps that is not possible, for I have lived through a strange experience that makes me doubt at times. When my nestling was on her way to us, when a perfect love enfolded me, a love that protected, guarded, surrounded me with everything that life can yield, then it was that, at times, I felt again a stranger in this world; nor love of husband, nor love of friends, nor my love for them, for my home, nor my very passion of anticipated motherhood, could banish that feeling. I never told my husband. He will read it here for the first time. I accounted for it by reason of my condition in which every nerve centre was alive for two. It may be my mother felt this before me--I do not know. But when my baby came, when I could touch the little bundle beside me, when I gave her the first nourishment from the fountain of her life, the feeling left me. I have not experienced it since. During this last winter I have occupied my enforced leisure in writing out these life-lines of mine. I have written them for my daughter. It may be that she, too, sheltered as she now is, may sometime find herself lost in the wilderness we call Life, may read these life-lines and, hearing her mother's cry, may find by means of it the trail--as her mother found it before her. My husband, entering quietly without my hearing him, leaned over my shoulder, as I was writing those last words, and took my pen from my fingers. "Not yet, Marcia; you have n't gained your strength." I seized a pencil, and while I try to finish now, scribbling, he is holding the end of it, ready to lift it from the paper.