She recalled, too, their previous conversation while she was gathering the roses—his words of kindly wisdom, his little bits of advice that now seemed to be weighted by more than mere friendly interest in her future happiness. Then her mind traveled back slowly, step by step, all the way to childhood days—a long vista marked by his comings and his goings, his prolonged absences, his unexpected but always welcome reappearances, his numberless acts of thoughtful kindness. Once she had been seriously ill, when a little girl, and the memory of that illness had ever been the memory of his face hovering over her cot, night and day, till the crisis had been passed and she had been on the way to assured convalescence. There had always been an air of mystery about Mr. Robles, but she had never sought to penetrate it, instinctively recognizing that there had been some great sorrow in his life, and almost unconsciously accepting the affectionate regard he had lavished on Grace and herself as some sort of consolation for him in his loneliness. She knew that Grace was only her sister in name, but none the less Grace was to her a real sister, just as Mrs. Darlington was a real mother—the only mother she had ever known. Weaving together now the threads of memory, she became conscious of the mystery in her own life. There was assuredly some fuller story than the story she had been told in the past and had always tacitly accepted—that her parents had been neighbors and dear friends of Mrs. Darlington in the long ago, and when they had died, the baby girl left behind had been bequeathed to her motherly care. At this stage in her ruminations Merle sat bolt upright in her chair. The shadows of evening were beginning to close around her, but the dawn of revelation was in her heart. Would Mrs. Darlington still be alone in her boudoir? Merle answered the unspoken thought by stealing from the room. Yes, Mrs. Darlington was at her writing table, lighted now by candles on each side which, covered by little red shades, only dimly illuminated the apartment. Merle flitted in without her coming being observed. Mrs. Darlington was no longer writing—her elbows were resting on the table and both hands were covering her eyes in an attitude of deep thought, perhaps of sleep, as Merle for a moment imagined when she had noiselessly gained her side. “Mother dear,” she said softly, laying a hand on her shoulder. “You here, my child?” exclaimed Mrs. Darlington. There was no trace of slumber in her eyes. “Yes, and I want to have a little talk with you—all alone,” said Merle, as she dropped into a chair, the very chair which Mr. Robles had previously occupied. The look of vague sadness and anxiety in Mrs. Darlington’s face deepened. “What about, dear?” she asked. Merle’s mind had been made up, and she came to the issue with point-blank abruptness. “Is Mr. Robles my father?”