dead child. Loving Lance rose from his chair and kissed her.

"You would not like to lose that, my darling, would you?" he said,
"Excepting me, that is all you have in the world."

They seemed to forget all about me; she clung to him, and he kissed her
face until I thought he would never give over.

"How lovely you were when I found you, Frances," he said. "Do you
remember the evening--you were bending over the crysanthemums?"

"I shall forget my own life and my own soul before I forget that," she
replied.

And I said to myself: "Even if my suspicion be perfectly true, have I
any right to mar such love as that?" I noticed that during all the
conversation about the locket, she never once looked at me.

We went to Vale Royal, and there never was man so bewildered as I. Lance
proposed that we should go visiting with Mrs. Fleming.

"Get your purse ready, John," he said--"this visit will require a small
fortune."

"I find the poor value kind words as much as money," said the beautiful
woman.

"Then they must be very disinterested," he said, laughingly--"I should
prefer money."