honorable than Bienville that's kept what has happened now from having
happened long ago. It might have come at any time. I thought it a fine
thing to be able to trifle with passion. I didn't know I was only
trifling with death. Oh, if I had been a good woman, George would have
been with us still!"

"You mustn't blame yourself," the mother-in-law said, speaking with some
difficulty, "for more than your own share of our troubles. I want to
talk to you quite frankly, and tell you things you've never known. The
beginning of the sorrows that have come to us dates very far back--back
to a time before you were born."

"Oh?"

Diane's brown eyes, swimming in tears, opened wide in a sort of mournful
curiosity.

"I admit," Mrs. Eveleth continued, "that in the first hours of our--our
bereavement I had some such thoughts about you as you've just expressed.
It seemed to me that if you had lived differently, George might have
been spared to us. It took reflection to show me that if you _had_ lived
differently, George himself wouldn't have been satisfied. The life you
led was the one he cared for--the one I taught him to care for. The
origin of the wrong has to be traced back to me."

"To you?" Diane uttered the words in increasing wonder. It was strange
that a first rôle in the drama could be played by any one but herself.

"I've always thought it a little odd," Mrs. Eveleth observed, after a
brief pause, "that you've never been interested to hear about our