If her own luxuries grew fewer, the change was so gradual that the
invalid did not notice it, and always her blindness made easy the
deception of those about her.

Even the move to another home was accomplished without her realizing it
--she was taken to the hospital for a month's treatment, and when the
month was ended she was tenderly carried home and laid on her own bed;
and she did not know that "home" now was a cheap little flat in Harlem
instead of the luxurious house on the avenue where her children were
born.

She was too ill to receive visitors, and was therefore all the more
dependent on her daughters for entertainment.

She pitied them openly for the grief and care she had brought upon them,
and in the next breath congratulated them and herself that at least they
had all that money could do to smooth the difficult way. In the face of
this, it naturally did not grow any easier for the girls to tell the
truth--and they kept silent.

For six years Mrs. Whitmore did not step; then her limbs and back grew
stronger, and she began to sit up, and to stand for a moment on her
feet. Her daughters now bought the strip of Axminster carpet and laid a
path across the bedroom, and another one from the bedroom door to the
great chair in the sitting-room, so that her feet might not note the
straw matting on the floor and question its being there.

In her own sitting-room at home--which had opened, like this, out of her
bedroom--the rugs were soft and the chairs sumptuous with springs and