He found her at last, in nurse’s garb, marching up and down the gravel paths of the "Common Sense Home for Defectives," as the institution was called. She was pruning privet hedges. She had a grim face, a belligerent eye, and she stood clicking her pruning shears aggressively as he approached, hat in hand. "Miss Quest, I presume?" he inquired. "I’m called Sister Rose," she answered shortly. "By any other name——" began Cleland, gallantly, but checked himself, silenced by the hostility in her snapping black eyes. "What do you wish?" she demanded impatiently. Cleland, very red, swallowed his irritation: "I came here in regard to your niece——" "Niece? I haven’t any!" "I beg your pardon; I mean your great-niece——" "What do you mean? I haven’t any that I know of." "Her name is Stephanie Quest." "Harry Quest’s child? Has he really got a baby? I thought he was lying! He’s such a liar—how was I to know that he has a baby?" "You didn’t know it, then?" "No. He wrote about a child. Of course, I supposed he was lying. That was before I went abroad." "You’ve been abroad?" "I have." "Long?" "Several years." "How long since you’ve heard from Harry Quest?" "Several years—a dozen, maybe. I suppose he’s living on what I settled on him. If he needed money I’d hear from him soon enough." "He doesn’t need money, now. He doesn’t need anything more from anybody. But his little daughter does." "Is Harry dead?" she asked sharply. "Very." "And—that hussy he married——" "Equally defunct. I believe it was suicide." "How very nasty!" "Or," continued Cleland, "it may have been suicide and murder." "Nastier still!" She turned sharply aside and stood clicking her shears furiously. After a silence: "I’ll take the baby," she said in an altered voice. "She’s eleven years old." "I forgot. I’ll take her anyway. She’s probably a defective——" "She is _not_!" retorted Cleland so sharply that Sister Rose turned on him in astonishment. "Madame," he said, "I want a little child to bring up. I have chosen this one. I possess a comfortable fortune. I offer to bring her up with every advantage, educate her, consider her as my own child, and settle upon her for life a sum adequate for her maintenance. I have the leisure, the inclination, the means to do these things. But you, Madame, are too busy to give this child the intimate personal attention that all children require——" "How do you know I am?" "Because your time is already dedicated, in a larger sense, to those unhappy children who need you more than she does. "Because your life is already consecrated to this noble charity of which you are founder and director. A world of unfortunates is dependent on you. If, therefore, I offer to lighten your burden by relieving you of one responsibility, you could not logically decline or disregard my appeal to your reason——" His voice altered and became lower: "And, Madame, I already love the child, as though she were my own."