"Haven't you made any kisses?" "No, dearie." "But," protested the child, "daddy'll be so disappointed!" "Will he, honey? That wouldn't do, would it? ... Very well, then, mother'll make some kisses." With Muriel looking on, the mother made several large, and heavy crosses at the foot of that which she had written. There were other marks on that letter--marks that were not kisses--marks that had been made by moisture, and that had smeared the ink as they had been quickly wiped away. These the child did not notice; she was looking toward the house. "Here comes Aunt Elinor, mother, dear," she said. [Illustration] CHAPTER NINETEEN. SHADOWS. Mrs. VanVorst had been very ill. A fever, contracted in South Africa where she had been with her husband--a fever gained in a futile effort to save the life of that husband, had sadly fagged a naturally vigorous constitution. There had been a recurrence soon after her return to America. Now she was in that condition of indolent convalescence that is in women so interesting, in men so uninteresting. She was an out-of-door woman, tall, lithe, willowy. In the rugged health that was normally hers, she seemed muscled almost like one of the opposite sex; yet she lost by it none of the charm of frank femininity that was hers. She was long-limbed, clean-limbed, quick of mind and of body.... The forced inaction of illness was irksome to her. It was hard for her to walk slowly; it was hard for her to sit in silent inaction-- to lie in indolent unrest. Too, she felt more than anyone save herself might ever know the loss of the man that had been to her not only husband but as well friend, companion and comrade. She had been of the world, though anything but worldly. She knew perhaps, more than many another of the Hidden Things. She strolled forward through the sun-flecked garden. A magazine, its leaves still uncut, was in her hand. She sank into a chair, in a spot from which she might see the Sound and its burden of sails. "Tom come yet?" she asked. Kathryn shook her head. "Not yet." "Heard from Jack to-day?" Again Kathryn made negation. "The foreign mail hasn't come yet," she said. "I told Pierre to stop at the office for it." Elinor, selecting a paper knife, ran it slowly between the pages of her magazine. "That business of his seems to be keeping him a long time," was her comment. "What did he say in his last letter?" "Why, there are several matters of great importance that still remain unsettled. It's not a little thing, his mission, you know. I don't know much about such things; but diplomatic questions, it always seemed to me, take years and years of all manner of serious discussion, and weighty argument." Kathryn tried to speak lightly; yet the heaviness of her heart was pitifully apparent. Elinor was scanning a colored frontispiece--a thing of vivid yellows and brilliant blues. "You're feeling almost like yourself again, aren't you, Nell?" Elinor nodded.