All Saturday and half Sunday she had repressed the pangs of a healthy appetite, and had partaken only of the mutton-broth and splintered toast of invalidism. With a not ill-grounded dread lest Di's quick eyes should detect a subterfuge, she had gone so far as to take "heart-drops" three times a day from the hand of her granddaughter, and had been careful to have recourse to her tin of arrowroot biscuits only in the strictest privacy. But now that Sunday afternoon had come, she felt that she could safely relax into convalescence. The blinds were drawn up, and she was established in an armchair by the window. "You seem really better," said Di. "I should hardly have known you had had one of your attacks. You generally look so pale afterwards." "It has been very slight," said Mrs. Courtenay, blushing faintly. "I took it in time. I shall be able to travel to-morrow. I suppose you and Miss Fane went to church this morning?" "Miss Fane would not go, but John and I did." Mrs. Courtenay closed her eyes. Virtue may be its own reward, but it is gratifying when it is not the only one. "Granny," said Di, suddenly, "I never knew, till John told me, that my mother had been engaged to his father." "What has John been raking up those old stories for?" "I don't think he raked up anything. He seemed to think I knew all about it. He was showing me my mother's miniature which he had found among his father's papers. I always supposed that the reason you never would talk about her was because you had felt her death too much." "I was glad when she died," said Mrs. Courtenay. "Was she unhappy, then? Father speaks of her rather sadly when he does mention her, as if he had been devoted to her, but she had not cared much for him, and had felt aggrieved at his being poor. He once said he had many faults, but that was the one she could never forgive. And he told me that when she died he was away on business, and she did not leave so much as a note or a message for him." "It is quite true; she did not," said Mrs. Courtenay, in a suppressed voice. "I have never talked to you about your mother, Di, because I knew if I did I should prejudice you against your father, and I have no right to do that." "I think," said Di, "that now I know a little you had better tell me the rest, or I shall only imagine things were worse than the reality." So Mrs. Courtenay told her; told her of the little daughter who had been born to her in the first desolation of her widowhood, round whom she had wrapped in its entirety the love that many women divide between husband and sons and daughters.