He knelt down on the rug, stirring the logs into a cheerful blaze. Miss Merivale sank down on the sofa and watched him in silence. If Tom had looked attentively at her, he would have seen that her face was grey with pain. She had spent some bitter hours since Pauline had spoken to her that morning. Though she had done it for Tom’s sake, she feared that he would find it very hard to forgive her. And looking back over the last few weeks, she found it almost impossible to understand how she could have been happy for a moment while keeping such a secret from him. The knowledge that Pauline shared the secret had been like a light brought into a dark room. Her shock of repulsion at Pauline’s eagerness to convince her that she would be silent had been followed by the sad reflection that she had no right to blame Pauline for being willing to do what she herself had done for a month past. “There, that is better,” Tom said, getting up. “Let me draw your sofa close up to the fire. Where is your knitting, Aunt Lucy? I know you can’t have your afternoon nap without it.” But Miss Merivale did not laugh at the old joke that she pretended to be knitting when she was really fast asleep. “Tom, sit down,” she said. “I want to speak to you.” Tom hesitated. She had spoken in so low a tone he had not noticed how her voice trembled. “I thought I would go to meet them, Aunt Lucy. They will be coming back by this time.” “Sit down,” she repeated more urgently. “I want to speak to you. I must tell you before they come home.” He was thoroughly startled now. “Has anything happened?” he said. “What is it?” He drew a chair close to her and sat down, his square, honest face full of concern. “What is it, Aunt Lucy?” She turned away from him. It was more difficult to speak than she had expected, though she had known it would be very difficult. “Tom, it is about Rhoda,” she said in a choked voice. He straightened himself in his chair. “About Rhoda?” he echoed. She heard the challenge in his grave voice. “Yes, about Rhoda. I want to tell you why I asked her here. You know that I love her, Tom. You know how happy it has made me to see that you”-- “Dear Aunt Lucy, I was sure you had guessed,” Tom said in an eager voice. “And”-- “Tom, wait,” she said breathlessly. “You don’t understand me yet. Has it never struck you as strange that I should have asked Rhoda to live here, that I should have treated her as a child of my own?” No, Tom was not able to say that he had thought it strange. Rhoda being Rhoda, it had seemed to him most natural that his aunt should have loved her at first sight, just as he had done. But his voice was anxious as he answered, “Aunt Lucy, I don’t understand in the least what you are driving at. What is it you want to tell me?” She turned towards him, clasping her hands together. “Tom, Rhoda is Lydia’s little girl. She is my own niece. I have known it ever since the first day she came to see me.”