I suppose I must have shown what was in my mind, for, all of a sudden, with a sort of sob or groan, he put his arms round me--such a strong yet such a gentle clasp! "Don't look like that, dear!" he pleaded. "Forgive me--it was cowardly, what I said--and not true. We're all to blame--you the least. Haven't I seen, day after day, how you've done everything you could to spare her--how you've worn yourself out?" He let me go as suddenly as he had seized me. "I'm not fit to be called a man!" he exclaimed. "Just because I loved you, and was always thinking of you, and watching you, and worrying about you, I neglected to think of mother. If I'd given her a single thought I'd have known long ago that she was ill." Just then Mrs. Burke's maid called me--she was only a few yards away, and must have seen everything. I hurried back to the room we had quitted a few minutes before. "You must cheer up those two big, foolish men, child," she said. "You all think I'm going to pass over, but I'm not. You won't get rid of me for many a year. And I rely on you to prevent them from going all to pieces." She paused and looked at me wistfully, as if she longed to say something but was afraid she had no right to. I said: "What is it--ma?" Her face brightened. "Come, kiss me," she murmured. "Thank you for saying that. We're very different in lots of ways, being raised so different. But hearts have a way of finding each other, haven't they?" I nodded. "What I wanted to say was about--Cyrus," she went on. "My Cyrus told me that he don't see how he could get along without you, no way, and I advised him to talk to you about it, because I knew it'd relieve his mind and because it'd set you to looking at him in a different way. Anyhow, it's always a good plan to ask for what you want. And he did--and he told me you wouldn't hear to him. Don't think I'm trying to persuade you. All I meant to say is that--" She stopped and smiled, a bright shadow of that old, broad, beaming smile of hers. "I'd do anything for you!" I exclaimed, on impulse. "I'm afraid that wouldn't suit Cyrus," she drawled, good humoredly. "He'd be mad as the Old Scratch if he knew what I was up to now. Well--do the best you can. But don't do anything unless it's for his sake. Only--just look him over again. There's a lot to Cyrus besides his cowlick. And he's been so dead in love with you ever since he first saw you that he's been making a perfect fool of himself every time he looked at you or spoke to you. Sometimes, when I've seen the way he's acted up, like a farmhand waltzing in cowhides, I've felt like taking him over my knees and laying it on good and hard." I was laughing so that I couldn't answer--the reaction from the fear that she might be very, very ill had made me hysterical. I could still see that she was sick, extremely sick, but I realized that our love for her had just put us into a panic.