felt quite confident she was not; at least, he hoped not.

The woman shook her head. "No," she said.

"Who is her mother?"

The woman looked at the sleeping child and then up at him
almost defiantly. "Ida Clare was her mother," she said.

Van Bibber's protecting hand left the child as suddenly
as though something had burned it, and he drew back so quickly
that her head slipped from his arm, and she awoke and raised
her eyes and looked up at him questioningly. He looked back
at her with a glance of the strangest concern and of the
deepest pity. Then he stooped and drew her towards him very
tenderly, put her head back in the corner of his arm, and
watched her in silence while she smiled drowsily and went to
sleep again.

"And who takes care of her now?" he asked.

The woman straightened herself and seemed relieved. She
saw that the stranger had recognized the child's pedigree and
knew her story, and that he was not going to comment on it.
"I do," she said. "After the divorce Ida came to me," she
said, speaking more freely. "I used to be in her company when
she was doing `Aladdin,' and then when I left the stage and
started to keep an actors' boarding-house, she came to me.
She lived on with us a year, until she died, and she made me
the guardian of the child. I train children for the stage,