Mam’selle almost expected to find it dark when she went out from the dim room, but it was broad daylight, and when she looked at the clock in the church tower she saw that she had been but an hour inside. In all the years of her life she had never experienced half so much as she had during the space of time with the two Sisters. She was conscious of trying to keep what she had heard in the Home, out of her mind; she was afraid to face it in the open. There were children playing about; a Sister or two looked at her curiously; she must be alone before she dared take her terrible knowledge into consideration. Gravely she went to the caleche, stiffly she took the reins and clicked to Molly. A mile from St. Michael’s, much to Molly’s disgust, they turned from the main road and struck into a wood trail where the snowy slush made travel difficult. Jo did not go far, she merely wanted to hide from any chance passerby. Then she let the reins drop in her lap and staring straight ahead—thought! It was growing cold, that dead cold that comes when the mercury is dropping. But Jo was back in the summer time of her life, she was studying Langley, and the woman who had lured him, with the mature power that suffering years had later evolved in Jo herself. By some psychic force she seemed able to follow them far, far. So far she went in imagination that she saw the "white high-tops" changing from shade to shade. Jo, who had never been fifty miles from her birthplace, went far in that hour! She understood Langley as she never had before. She suffered with him, no longer because of him. The dreadful scene in the lonely wood-cabin; the stranger man who had told his story! And against that story who could prevail? But would Langley have been coming to her with his child had he been guilty of the crime with which he was charged? And Donelle’s words: "They will believe me. Let me tell, I saw how it was." Mam’selle, stiff with cold, smiled with rare radiance as one might who, considering her dishonoured dead, knows in her heart that he is innocent. "If the child ever remembers, then I can speak," thought poor Jo. "I believe the man who came to the Home is the guilty one. He wanted the girl, wanted to hush her story. He must think her dead, dead, unless she can prove—the truth." The black tragedy into which poor Mam’selle had been plunged quickened every sense. Her one determination was to hide Langley’s child, not only for her own safety, but in order that the horrible story of the crime might be stilled. Langley was dead, he must rest in peace. But that man might be alive; the merest suspicion of Donelle’s existence would bring about the greatest disaster. He might claim the girl, by pretending relationship, and then go to any lengths to insure her silence. No; come what might, all must be hidden.