Rhoda and her father, coming from opposite directions, drove up to their east gate at the same moment, in the red glow of a March sunset. She told him hurriedly of the happenings of the afternoon and of the narrow chance by which she had finally saved the mulatto lad from recapture. At the veranda steps Jim met them, with an excited account of the marshal’s visit and his search of the house. He evidently knew of the woodshed hiding place, the man said, for he went to it at once. “Was any one at home?” “No, sah, nobody but Lizzie and me. But Mrs. Ware, she done come before they leave.” “Then she knows now,” Rhoda told herself. “Oh, to think she had to find it out that way!” They walked silently down the veranda, avoiding each other’s eyes, and entered at the front door. Mrs. Ware was coming down the stairs. Rhoda stopped short, but her father walked swiftly past her and held out his hand to his wife. She could not see his face, but the look on her mother’s countenance stabbed her to the heart. In it the girl read resentful inquiry, wounded faith, reproachful love. They seemed oblivious of her, as Mrs. Ware stood looking into her husband’s face with that hurt look upon her own. She did not take the hand he held out. Then Rhoda saw him sweep her close to his side and heard him say in a choking voice, “Come, Emily!” He led her into the living-room and closed the door. What passed between them there Rhoda never knew--what confessions of outraged rights, what heart-barings of living tenderness, what recognitions of inner imperatives, what renewals of the bonds of love and trust. She crouched where she had dropped on the stair step, miserably conscious that this was the climax of the estrangement over her between her father and mother, feeling keenly that it had been her mother’s right to know the use that was being made of her home, appreciating her father’s motive in wishing to keep it hidden, remorseful for the wound her share in it would deal her mother’s heart, but unable to give up one jot of her conviction that what she and her father had been doing had been demanded of them by the highest laws of God and the most sacred rights of man. In a jumble of thought and feeling, swept by waves of passionate sympathy and compassion for both of the two within that closed door, Rhoda sat huddled on the stairs until her mother came out. “Mother!” she called, springing up and holding out her hands. Mrs. Ware came up and took them, saying simply, “How cold they are, honey!” and pressed them to her breast. In the dim light the girl could see that her face was very pale but that her eyes were shining with calm happiness. “Oh, mother! We both felt that you ought to know about it--” “It’s all right, dear child. I would rather your father had confided in me from the first--” “It wasn’t that he doubted you, mother! Oh, don’t think that! He knew you would be loyal to him--but he thought it might give you pain to know--”