thought--then flushed, for, side by side with her satisfaction at her exemplary conduct was a rankling memory--a memory which made her constantly tell herself, and everybody else, that she "loved both her children just the same." The remorse--for it amounted to that--began a few weeks after Mr. Payton's death, when Freddy, listening to her mother's pride in the black-bordered handkerchief, had flung out: "If you told the truth, you'd use a flag for a handkerchief, and you'd go to church to return thanks!" There had been a dreadful scene between the mother and daughter that day. "As for 'mourning' him," Andrew Payton's daughter said, "you don't. It's a lie to smother yourself in that horrid, sticky veil. You are mighty glad to get rid of him! You were as afraid as death of him, and you didn't love him at all. All this talk about 'mourning' is rot." Mrs. Payton cowered as if her daughter had struck her: "Oh, how can you be so wicked!" "Is it wicked to tell the truth?" Mrs. Payton clasped and unclasped her hands: "I did my duty! But do you suppose I've been _happy_?" Her breath caught in a sob. "I've lived in hell all these years, just to make a home for you! I did my duty." "I should have thought 'duty' would have made you leave him," Frederica said; "hell isn't a very good home for a child." She was triumphantly aware that she had said something smart; her mother's wincing face admitted it. "I suppose you were afraid to make a break while he was alive," she said, "but why not tell the truth now?" Already the consciousness of self-betrayal had swept over Andy Payton's wife; her face flamed with anger. "You had no business to make me say a thing like that! You only tell the truth to hurt my feelings. _You are just like Andrew!_" She looked straight at her daughter, her eyes fierce with candor. "I love Mortimore best," she said, in a whisper. For a single instant they stared at each other like two strangers. The mother was the first to come to herself. "I--I didn't mean that, Freddy. I love you both alike. But it was wicked to speak so of your father." "I was a beast to hurt your feelings!" Frederica said; "and I don't in the least mind your loving Mortimore best. But what I said about Father is true; his being my father doesn't alter the fact that he was horrid. Mother, you _know_ he was horrid! Don't let's pretend, at any rate to each other."