Maude had offered her hand to Georgie, over whom a curious change had passed. The expression of fear was gone, and as Maude talked of Annie, there came a softer look into her face, and grasping Maude’s offered hand, she burst into such a passionate fit of weeping and bitter sobbing, that Maude, forgetting all her anger, knelt down beside her, trying to soothe and quiet her, and asking what was the matter, and if she had offended her. “I did not want you to tell of Edna,” she said, “and I was harsh-with you about that; but, Georgie, I want to like you, and you must like me, for Jack’s sake, if nothing else.” “I do, I will,” Georgie gasped; “but Maude, oh, Maude, why did you open a grave I had thought closed forever? I am glad you are to be Jack’s wife,—glad for him, and glad for Annie. She will have a mother in you, I know, and may God deal with you and yours as you deal with her; oh, my darling, my darling!” In her excitement Georgie said more than she would otherwise have done, and with that passionate cry, “my darling, oh, my darling,” she seemed suddenly to recollect herself, and, wresting her hand from Maude, she rose up swiftly and went back to her own room, leaving Maude more perplexed and confounded, and more kindly disposed toward Georgie withal than she had ever been in her life. “I have sealed her lips with regard to Edna,” she thought, “but I have wounded her cruelly somewhere. How she did cry about that little Annie, and what can the secret be that just the mention of it affects her so much?” But wonder as she would, Maude was very far from the truth, and never dreamed of the cloud resting upon the woman, who in the next room sat with her head bowed down under a load of so bitter shame and humiliation, that it seemed as if she never again could lift it up as proudly and assuredly as she had done before. The world was very dark to Georgie then, and more evils than one seemed to be threatening her. Maude knew her secret, in part, if not in whole,—knew enough, at least, to blast her good name with Roy, should she dare to breathe a hint against Miss Overton. Her hands were tied in that direction, and when she remembered the admiring glances she had seen Roy give to Edna, and thought of all the opportunities he would have of seeing and knowing, ay, and of _loving_ her, too, she writhed with pain, feeling an almost certain presentiment that this young girl, whom from the first she had to a certain degree felt to be her evil genius, had at last come between her and that for which she had waited and hoped so long. Purer, better thoughts, too, were stirring in Georgie’s heart,—thoughts of little Annie, to whom Maude was to be a mother. “And I am glad,” she whispered; “for I know she will be kind to Annie, and, for Jack’s sake, will keep my miserable secret. Oh, that I should ever have come to this, when a word from a weak girl can turn me from my purpose! Yet so it is, and Edna Browning is safe; but, heavens! how I hate her!”