"Now, I have one more question to ask that I'm afraid may startle you, but please don't attach too much importance to it. Was the lady you called mother your real mother or your stepmother?" This time Cecily fairly jumped. "Oh, no, no!" she cried. "I'm sure, I'm very sure she was my own mother. She would certainly have told me if she had not been. I would have known it. Why do you ask?" "That, you know, is what we can't just explain yet," answered Janet, evidently distressed. "Were you very, very fond of her, Cecily?" "Indeed, yes!" replied the puzzled girl. "How could I help but be? She was so lovely and sweet and good to me, and seemed to live only for my comfort and happiness. I never dreamed of such a thing as her not being my own mother." There were real tears in Cecily's eyes as she made this declaration. Marcia and Janet experienced as unpleasant a sensation as if they had been compelled to torture a helpless kitten. And yet the task must be gone through with and there were further queries to make. "Do forgive us for all this, Cecily," begged Marcia. "It hurts us horribly to make you feel badly. We wouldn't do it for the world if there weren't a good reason. But can you tell us this? Was there anything your mother ever said or did that would in any way suggest that she might not be--your own mother? Think hard, Cecily dear." The girl sat a long while, chin in hand, staring out of the window at the tightly shuttered expanse of "Benedict's Folly" opposite. No one spoke, and the others made a vain pretense of working hard at their embroidery. But the hands of both shook so that the stitches were very, very crooked indeed. At last Cecily turned to them and spoke in a very subdued voice: "These things are making me very unhappy, but I know you only mean them for my good. My mother did say one or two things that I thought nothing of at the time, but now, since your questions, seem as if they may have another meaning. One was this. We were looking in the mirror together one time, and I said how queer it was that I didn't look a bit like her. I was so fair and light-haired, and had rosy cheeks, and she was dark and her eyes were brown and her hair almost black. She smiled and said: