"Stay!" said Eve. She rose, and made a motion as if she were going to give the child to her companion. But little Jack put up his hand again, and stroked her cheek; he was crooning meanwhile to himself composedly a little song of his own invention; it was evident that he would never be afraid of her again. Eve kissed him. "Do you think she would give him to me?" she asked, hungrily. "She cannot care for him--not as I do." Miss Sabrina drew herself up (in the excess of her sympathy, as well as near-sightedness, she had been leaning so far forward that her flat breast had rested almost on her knees). "Give up her child--her own child? My niece? I think not; I certainly think not." She took off her glasses and put them in her pocket decisively. "Then I shall take him from her. And you must help me. What will she care in a month from now--a year? She has already forgotten his father." Miss Sabrina was still angry. But she herself had not liked her niece's second marriage. "The simplest way would be to stay here for the present," she said, temporizing. "Stay here? Now? How can you ask it?" Tears rose in the elder lady's eyes; she began to wipe them away clandestinely one by one with her long taper finger. "It's a desolate place now, I know; but it's very peaceful. The garden is pretty. And we hoped that you wouldn't mind. We even hoped that you would like it a little--the child being here. We would do all we could. Of course I know it isn't much." These murmured words in the melancholy voice seemed to rouse in Eve Bruce an even more stormy passion than before. She went to Miss Sabrina and took hold of her shoulder. "Do you think I can stand seeing _him_," she demanded--"here--in Jack's place? If I could, I would go to-night." Turning away, she broke into tearless sobs. "Oh Jack--Jack--" Light dawned at last in Sabrina Abercrombie's mind. "You mean Mr. Morrison?" she said, hurriedly rising. "You didn't know, then? Cicely didn't tell you?" "She told me that she had married again; nothing more. Six months ago. She let me come here--you let me come here--without knowing it."