"Perhaps she will not want to take him when she knows his mother's sin." "She will hold him all the more tenderly because of what his mother has suffered." "Ah! is she then so good? so kind?" "She is not very good," said Margaret, smiling down at her, "but to your boy she promises she will never be anything but kind. My poor girl, will you trust her?" A sudden light broke upon the sick woman. "You?" she cried. "You?--who heard it all, and took my hand--and understood? You?" A look of awe and then of peace ineffable stole over her face. "Oh, madam! _now_ I know God has forgiven me!" CHAPTER XXXI A WOMAN'S CRUSADE Margaret's action in taking a dying woman into her home that she might give her the blessedness of being with her child while life lasted excited little comment. Indeed it was known to but few persons. Social life in the capital city is an unstable thing. Congressional circles change; army and navy people move away; there are the "ins" and the "outs" with every administration; and fortunes rise and fall there as elsewhere. Margaret found her world greatly narrowed when she came back to Washington after years of absence. Besides, the few friends who were closest to her had become accustomed now to expect the unusual. It is the beauty of an unconventional life which keeps within the proprieties that when one has made it definitely clear that she intends to follow her own lead she finds herself by that act lifted above the realm of harassing criticism. Margaret had not felt it necessary to take even her own small world into her confidence. "We won't say anything to Maria about it," advised Mrs. Pennybacker. "She wouldn't understand it, and besides, what Maria knows might just as well be put in the evening papers. She gives of her knowledge without stint." The servants knew Mrs. Lesseur as a sick friend of Mrs. De Jarnette's--Bess, as an unfortunate woman who had excited Margaret's sympathies because of her friendless, widowed condition. "That is enough for any young girl to know," said Mrs. Pennybacker, to whom Margaret had told the whole story. "We'll tell Mr. Harcourt the same." Judge Kirtley was a little inclined to question the wisdom of Margaret's burdening herself with a dying woman, but Mrs. Pennybacker had said to him impressively, "Judge Kirtley, the time has come when you and I may well 'put off the shoes from off our feet for the place whereon we stand is holy ground.' The Lord is leading Margaret in ways we do not know." And the Judge said no more. Watching the girl closely he halfway thought it was true.