marry him; and she held to her refusal with the firmness for
which the Lenoxes were famous. They suspected Jimmie Galt,
because he had been about the most attentive of the young men
until two or three months before, and because he had abruptly
departed for Europe to study architecture. Lorella denied that
it was he. "If you kill him," she said to Warham, "you kill an
innocent man." Warham was so exasperated by her obstinacy that
he was at first for taking her at her offer and letting her go
away. But Fanny would not hear of it, and he acquiesced.
Now--"This child must be sent away off somewhere, and never be
heard of again," he said to himself. "If it'd been a boy,
perhaps it might have got along. But a girl----

"There's nothing can be done to make things right for a girl
that's got no father and no name."

The subject did not come up between him and his wife until about
a week after Lorella's funeral. But he was thinking of nothing
else. At his big grocery store--wholesale and retail--he sat
morosely in his office, brooding over the disgrace and the
danger of deeper disgrace--for he saw what a hold the baby
already had upon his wife. He was ashamed to appear in the
streets; he knew what was going on behind the sympathetic faces,
heard the whisperings as if they had been trumpetings. And he
was as much afraid of his own soft heart as of his wife's. But
for the sake of his daughter he must be firm and just.

One morning, as he was leaving the house after breakfast, he
turned back and said abruptly: "Fan, don't you think you'd
better send the baby away and get it over with?"