"I think not," she said, "we can secure ourselves from intrusion by locking the door." He rose, turned the key, and came back. He did not speak again for a moment, but sat watching Annis with a peculiar expression which excited his cousin's surprise and curiosity and not for the first time either; she had noted it before; the child seemed to both attract and repel him. More than once Mrs. Keith had seen him snatch her up suddenly with a gesture of strong affection, only to set her down the next minute and turn away as if from something painful to look upon. "What is it you see in my baby, Horace?" she asked, laying her hand affectionately upon his arm. "She is a sweet, pretty little thing, yet it gives me more pain than pleasure to look at her," he said sighing and passing his hand across his brow. "You cannot imagine why it should," he went on, smiling sadly into his cousin's wondering face, "because there is a page in my past life that you have never read." His features worked with emotion. He rose and paced the floor back and forth several times; then coming to her side again, "Marcia, I have been a husband; I am a father; my little girl--whom I have never seen--must be just about the age of Annis." "You, Horace? you are but twenty years old!" dropping her work to look up at him in utter amazement. "I knew you would be astonished--that you could hardly credit it--but it is true." Then resuming his seat he poured out in impassioned language, the story already so well known to the readers of the Elsie books--of his visit to New Orleans three years before this, his hasty and clandestine marriage to the beautiful heiress, Elsie Grayson, their speedy separation by her guardian and big father, the subsequent birth of their little daughter and the death of the young mother, following so soon thereafter. Her work forgotten, her hands lying idly in her lap, her eyes gazing intently into his, Mrs. Keith listened in almost breathless silence, the tears coursing down her cheeks during the saddest passages. "My poor Horace! my poor, dear cousin!" she said when he had finished. "Oh, it was hard, very hard! Why did you never tell me before." "I could not, Marcia," he answered in tremulous tones, "it is the first time I have spoken my darling's name since--since I knew that she was lost to me forever." "Forever! oh do not say that! You have told me she was a sweet Christian girl, and none who trust in Jesus can ever be lost." "But to me; I am no Christian," he sighed. "But you may become one. The invitation is to you, 'Come unto me;' and the blessed assurance, 'Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out.'" He sat silent, his face averted, his head bowed upon his hands. She waited a moment, then spoke again. "Your child, Horace?" "She is at Viamede with the guardian." "And you have never seen her?" "No." "Oh how can you bear it? doesn't your heart yearn over her? don't you long to have her in your arms?"