"Mama, there is no reason why it should worry you," Alice said, distressed, too. "Don't think of it; I'm sorry I spoke! But sometimes, even though she is so dark, Norma is so like Annie that it makes my blood run cold. If Annie ever suspected that she is--well, her own daughter----" Mrs. Melrose's face was ashen, and she looked as if touched by the heat. "No--no, dear!" she said, with a sort of terrified brevity. "You and Chris were wrong there. I can't talk to you about it, Alice," she broke off, pleadingly; "you mustn't ask me, dear. You said you wouldn't," she pleaded, trembling. Alice was stupefied. For a full minute she lay in her pillows, staring blankly at her mother. "_Isn't_----!" she whispered at last, incredulous and bewildered. "No, dear. Poor Annie----! No, no, no; Norma's mother is dead. But--but you must believe that Mama is acting as she believes to be for the best," she interrupted herself, in painful and hesitating tones, "and that I can't talk about it now, Alice; I can't, indeed! Some day----" "Mama darling," Alice cried, really alarmed by her leaden colour and wild eyes, "please--I'll never speak of it again! Why, I know that everything you do is for us all, darling! Please be happy about it. Come on, we'll talk of something else. When do you leave for town--to-morrow?" "Poole drives us as far as Great Barrington to-morrow, Norma and me," the old lady began, gaining calm as she reviewed her plans. Chris needed her for a little matter of business, and Norma was anxious to see her Cousin Rose's new baby. The conversation drifted to Leslie's baby, the idolized Patricia who was now some four months old. CHAPTER XVIII Two days later found Norma happily seated beside the big bed she and Rose had shared less than two years ago, where Rose now lay, with the snuffling and mouthing baby, rolled deep in flannels, beside her. Rose had come home to her mother, for the great event, and Mrs. Sheridan was exulting in the care of them both. Just now she was in the kitchen, and the two girls were alone together, Norma a little awed and a little ashamed of the emotion that Rose's pale and rapt and radiant face gave her; Rose secretly pitying, from her height, the woman who was not yet a mother. "And young Mrs. Liggett was terribly disappointed that her baby was a girl," Rose marvelled. "I didn't care one bit! Only Harry is glad it's a boy." "Well, Leslie was sure that hers was going to be a boy," Norma said, "and I wish you could have heard Aunt Annie deciding that the Melroses usually had sons----" "She'll have a boy next," Rose suggested. Norma glanced at her polished finger-tip, adjusted the woolly tan bag she carried. "She says never again!" she remarked, airily. Rose's clear forehead clouded faintly, and Norma hastened to apologize. "Well, my dear, that's what she _said_," she remarked, laughingly, with quick fingers on Rose's hand.