“It concerns Sally, Mrs. Barr, and anything that concerns her, either her past, present or future—” his eyes flicked a tiny smile at Sally as he repeated the familiar phrase from Gus, the barker’s ballyhoo—“is sacred to me.” “Thank you,” Enid said coldly, and was immediately punished by Sally’s attempt to withdraw her hand. “I am sure I can trust you, David,” Enid added, swallowing her pride, so that Sally’s fingers would twine about her own again. “My mother was dead, had been dead for more than five years. I had to tell my father. There’s no use in my going into all that happened then,” she shivered, her free hand covering her eyes for a moment. “He—saw me through it, because he loved me more than I deserved. No one knew, for he arranged for me to go to a private sanitarium, where no one but the doctor knew my real name. After my baby was born my father told me it had been born dead, and I—I was glad at first. But afterwards I could hardly bear to look at a baby—I mustn’t try to make you sorry for me,” she cried brokenly, flicking her handkerchief at a tear that was sliding down her cheek. Enid Barr drew a deep, quivering breath and cuddled Sally’s hand against her cheek. “Father took me to Europe for a year and when we returned, I made my debut, as if nothing had happened. I was eighteen then, and thought I never wanted to be married, but when I met Courtney Barr my second season I changed my mind; when I was twenty I married him. I’ve been married thirteen years and—there’s never been another baby. There couldn’t be—because of the first one—you, Sally—though I didn’t know, didn’t dream you were alive.” “Poor Mother!” Sally whispered, tears slipping unnoticed down her own cheeks. It was all right—all right! Her mother hadn’t meant to abandon her, even if she had been ashamed of bearing her— “My father died when I was twenty-one, just four years after you were born, Sally. He died suddenly, and the lawyers couldn’t find a will. He’d hidden it too well. Everything came to me, of course, all that he had meant you to have as well as my own share—” “He—my grandfather—sent Mrs. Ford money.” Sally cried suddenly. “Gramma Bangs told me she used to get money orders and that when the money stopped coming, Mrs. Ford had to put me in the orphanage, because she was sick—I understand now!” “Yes, he sent her a liberal allowance for you, on condition that she never tell who you were and that she should never bring you to New York. She did not herself know who you were, who the man was who sent the money, who your mother was,” Enid Barr went on, her voice more controlled now that she had passed over the telling of her own shame.