"I think you had better go on," said Mrs. Thorne gently; "but take off your bonnet, my dear." "Still 'my dear'?" sighed the girl. "Is so much kindness quite consistent with your duty? Will you leave _all_ the plain speaking to me?" "Forgive me," said the mother humbly; "but I cannot call you 'Miss Benedet.' We seem to have got beyond that." "Oh, we have got beyond everything! There is no precedent for us in the past"--she felt for her hat pins--"and no hope in the future." She put off the winged circlet that crowned her hair, and Mrs. Thorne took it from her. Almost shyly the middle-aged woman, who had never herself been even pretty, looked at the sad young beauty, sitting uncovered in the moonlight. "You should never wear anything on your head. It is desecration." "Is it? I always conform, you know. I wear anything, do anything, that is demanded." "Ah, but the head--such hair! I wonder that I do not hate you when I think of my poor Willy." "You will hate me when I am gone," said the beautiful one wearily; "you may count on the same revulsion in him. I know it. I have been through it. There is nothing so loathsome in the bitter end as mere good looks." "Ah, but why"--the mother checked herself. Was she groveling already for Willy's sake? She had stifled the truth, and accepted thanks not her due, and listened to praise of her own magnanimity. Where were the night's surprises to leave her? II Mr. Thorne had changed his seat, and the sound of a fresh chair creaking under his comfortable weight was a touch of commonplace welcomed by his wife with her usual laugh, half amused and half apologetic. "Why do you go off there, Henry? Do you expect us to follow you?" "There's a breeze around the corner of the house!" he ejaculated fervently. "Go and find it, then; we do not need you. Do we?" "_I_ need him," said the girl in her sweetest tones. "He helped me once, without a word. It helps me now to have him sitting there"-- "Without a word!" Mrs. Thorne irrepressibly supplied. "Why can't we let her finish?" Thorne demanded, hitching his chair into an attitude of attention. It was impossible for Miss Benedet to take up her story in the key in which she had left off. She began again rather flatly, allowing for the chill of interruptions:--