"Why," Mrs. Melrose stammered, with a rather feeble attempt at lightness, "have I been acting like a person with something on her mind? It's nothing, children, nothing at all. Don't bother your dear, generous hearts about it another second!" And she looked from one to another with a gallant smile. Chris eyed his wife with a faint, hopeless movement of the head, and Alice correctly interpreted it to mean that the situation was worse instead of better. "You remember the night you sent for me, some weeks ago, Aunt Marianna?" he ventured. Mrs. Melrose moistened her lips, and swallowed with a dry throat, looking at him with a sort of alert defiance. "I confess that I was all upset that night," she admitted, bravely. "And to tell you children the truth, Kate Sheridan coming upon me so unexpectedly----" "Joseph quite innocently told me that evening that you had anticipated her coming!" Christopher said, quietly, as she paused. "Joseph was mistaken!" Mrs. Melrose said, warmly, with red colour beginning to burn in her soft, faded old face. "Kate had been associated with a terrible time in my life," she went on, almost angrily. "And it was quite natural--or at least it seems so to me!--I don't know what other people would feel, but to _me_----But what are you two cross-examining me for?" she interrupted herself to ask, with a sudden rush of tears, as Chris looked unconvinced, and Alice still watched her sorrowfully. "Little do you know, either of you, what I have been through----" "Mama," entreated Alice, earnestly, "will you answer me one question? I promise you that I won't ask another. You know how anxious we are only to help you, to make everything run smoothly. You know what the family is--to us. Don't you _see_ we are?" Alice asked suddenly, seeing that the desire for sympathy and advice was rapidly breaking up the ice that had chilled her mother's heart for long weeks. "Won't you tell me just this--it's about Annie, Mama. When she was so ill in Munich. Was--was her little baby born there?" "Yes!" Mrs. Melrose whispered, with fascinated eyes fixed on her daughter's face. Alice, ashen faced, fell back against her pillows without speaking. "Kate Sheridan brought the child home," Christopher stated, rather than asked, very quietly. His mother-in-law looked at him apathetically. "Kate--yes!" "Does Annie know it, Mama?" Alice whispered, after a silence. "Annie? Oh, my God, no!" The mother's voice rose almost to a wail. "Oh, Chris--Alice--if you love me, Annie must not know! So proud, so happy; and she would never bear it! I know her--I know her! She would kill herself before----"