"You see, I came here to keep house for Mr. Windom soon after old Maria Bliss died. My husband died when David was six years old. Alix was only four years old when I came here, Mr. Thane. This house was new,--just finished. I'll never forget the rage Mr. Windom got into when he found out that Alix and David were going up to the old farmhouse where her mother died and were using one of the upstairs rooms as a 'den.' They got in through a cellar window, it seems. They were each writing a novel, and that was where they worked and read what they had written to each other. That lasted only about six weeks or so before Mr. Windom found out about it. He was terrible. You see, without knowing it, they had picked out the room that was most sacred to him. It was his wife's own room,--where she died and where Alix's mother was born and where she also died,--and where our Alix was born. "Of course, at that time nobody knew about Edward Crown. We all thought he was alive somewhere. The children never went there again. No, sirree! They both ought to have known better than to go at all. Alix was fifteen years old when that happened, and Davy was going to college in the winter time." "Did your son live here in the house with you all those years?" inquired Courtney. "We lived in the first cottage down the lane from here. Mr. Windom was a very thoughtful man. He did not want me to live here in the house with him because of what people might say. You see, I was a young woman then, and--well, people are not always kind, you know." She spoke simply and without the slightest embarrassment. He looked hard at her half-averted face and was suddenly confronted by the realization that this grey, motherly woman must have been young once, like Alix, and pretty. As it is with the young, he could not think of her except as old. He had always thought of his mother as old; it was impossible to think of her as having once been young and gay like the girls he knew. Yes, Mrs. Strong must have been young and pretty and desirable,--somebody's sweetheart, somebody's "girl." The thought astonished him. II Shortly afterward he took his departure. There was a frown of annoyance on his brow as he strode briskly up the lane in the direction of the crossroads, half a mile or more above the village. As usual, he thought aloud.