"Don't you see?" she said. "I hadn't thought how my being there at the same inn with Mr. Ayling would look--and then, all at once, it came over me. The whole thing, how it would look to the world, how it would look to the family of my daughter's fiancé,--and that it might mean the breaking of the engagement,--the wreck of her future happiness--don't you see--I didn't think of 'being a rotter'--I only thought of her!" They uttered, both of them, a sudden exclamation, as if they had been struck. By their expressions one might have thought the woman the accuser and the two men the accused. "Oh, my dear Mrs. Lonsdale--!" they both began at once, but she stopped them with a gesture of her hand. "I don't blame you," she said, "I don't blame you. I _was_ a rotter, to run, but I simply didn't think of myself." Her tone, her gentleness, were the final proof. Only the innocent so graciously forgive. "And now," she was saying, a great weariness in her voice, "I've told you. Do you want me to go on? It isn't raining any more." "Perhaps, Mr. Ford--" Mr. Burke began. A look passed between them, like a question and an assent. "If you, Mr. Burke," said Mr. Ford, "will come on with me, I think we can let your man drive Mrs. Lonsdale home. It will not be necessary for her to appear." Bessie Lonsdale's thankfulness could find itself no words; it was lost in that first moment in astonishment. She had not really expected them to believe. It had not even, as she told it, seemed to her own ears adequate. "I think," said Mr. Burke, seeing her silent so long, "that Mrs. Lonsdale hasn't an idea of the seriousness of the charge she has escaped." "Charge?" she repeated--"Charge?--" and without another word, Bessie Lonsdale fainted in her chair. And as she lost consciousness she heard, dim and far away, the voice of Mr. Ford reply: "That--the fact that she _hadn't_ an idea of it--and that alone, is why she _has_ escaped." * * * * * "I'm perfectly sure," said Peggy Lonsdale, on Saturday afternoon, "that you _did_ let yourself have a dull time!" She was exploring the flat before she had taken off her things, and had stopped to sit for a moment on the arm of her mother's chair. "Anyway, mother dear, you didn't have to think of me! That must have been a relief!" She put down her head and kissed her, and Bessie Lonsdale patted the fragrant young cheek. "Oh, I thought of you occasionally," she said. FOOTNOTE: [15] Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1921, by Fleta Campbell Springer. OUT OF EXILE[16] #By# WILBUR DANIEL STEELE From _The Pictorial Review_ Among all the memories of my boyhood in Urkey Island the story of Mary Matheson and the Blake boys comes back to me now, more than any other, with the sense of a thing seen in a glass darkly. And the darkness of the glass was my own adolescence.