After all, it would be nice, Galt reflected to-day, and a step of that sort might ultimately quiet the dull aching of heart which had been his for so many years. Few men had ever had to such a marked degree the pronounced yearning toward paternity as had come to the lonely bachelor since the chief mistake of his life. His love for children was more like that of a woman who has tasted and lost the joys of motherhood than that of a man of the world. He never saw a pretty child without looking at its father with a sort of envious curiosity. Was the remainder of his life to be passed without his possessing that for which he yearned more than for any other earthly thing? He had heard, of course, of the birth of Dora's child, but he had so persistently fought off the thought of it and its attendant remorse that, like many another man so situated, his sense of responsibility in the matter had become somewhat dulled. He now ventured, during the General's jovial chatter, to glance across the lawn toward the cottage below. It was there in the starlight that he had seen the brave young girl for the last time. It was there. And he shuddered under the scourging lash of the words with which she had prophesied that he would fail to stand by her--fail to rescue her from the abyss into which he had plunged her. He shuddered again. Hero as he was in the sight of many, in Dora's eyes, at least, he could never be aught but despicable. She had gauged his weakness better than he could have done it himself. He had made a choice between honor and ambition, and he had abided by it. Other men had cast such memories to the winds of oblivion. Why had his clung to him with such damning tenacity? There was never any satisfactory answer to the question, and now and then a thought as from infinite space was hurled upon him with the force of a catapult--it was the conviction that, girl though she had been, Dora Barry's equal, in the intellectual and womanly things he admired, was not to be found among all the women he had known. What was she like now? What havoc had the tragedy and succeeding time wrought in the fair being whom he had left stranded and storm-swept on that eventful night? Under the low roof and in the tiny yard of the cottage just across the way she and his child, according to Wynn Dearing's report, had been imprisoned all those years. What a rebuke to his boundless egotism! He might remain there for years, and neither of the two would intrude themselves upon him. Oh yes, he told himself, he was safe enough on that score. She had kept her vow of secrecy so far, and would do so to the end. At this juncture there was a rippling scream of childish delight behind him, and, turning, he saw Lionel, his face flushed, his great eyes full of excitement, as he eagerly chased a black kitten round and round a bed of rose-bushes. “What a beautiful boy!” Galt exclaimed, beside himself in admiration. “What a perfect figure! Whose child is it?”