Lawrence Newt was a little troubled, but it was only evident in the quiet closing and unclosing of his hand. They stood for a few moments without speaking. Then she opened the miniature, and when she saw that he observed it she said, very slowly, "Is it quite fair, Mr. Newt?" "Mrs. Simcoe," he replied, inquiringly. His firm, low voice reassured her. "Why do you come here so often?" asked she. "To help Miss Hope." "Is it necessary that you should come?" "She wishes it." "Why?" He paused a moment. Mrs. Simcoe continued: "Lawrence Newt, at least let us be candid with each other. By the memory of the dead--by the common sorrow we have known, there should be no cloud between us about Hope Wayne. I use your own words. Tell me what you feel as frankly as you feel it." There was simple truth in the earnest face before him. While she was speaking she raised her hand involuntarily to her breast, and gasped as if she were suffocating. Her words were calm, and he answered, "I waited, for I did not know how to answer--nor do I now." "And yet you have had some impression--some feeling--some conviction. Yon know whether it is necessary that you should come--whether she wants you for an hour's chat, as an old friend--or--or"--she waited a moment, and added--"or as something else." As Lawrence Newt stood before her he remembered curiously his interview with Aunt Martha, but he could not say to Mrs. Simcoe what he had said to her. "What can I say?" he asked at length, in a troubled voice. "Lawrence Newt, say if you think she loves you, and tell me," she said, drawing herself erect and back from him, as in the twilight of the old library at Pinewood, while her thin finger was pointed upward--"tell me, as you will be judged hereafter--me, to whom her mother gave her as she died, knowing that she loved you." Her voice died away, overpowered by emotion. She still looked at him, and suspicion, incredulity, and scorn were mingled in her look, while her uplifted finger still shook, as if appealing to Heaven. Then she asked abruptly, and fiercely, "To which, in the name of God, are you false--the mother or the daughter?"