“I understand,” Tommy said hurriedly.  He meant:  “Let us avoid painful subjects.”

[Illustration:  “I sit still by his arm-chair and tell him what is happening to his Grizel.”]

“It is years,” she went on, “since those thoughts have troubled me, and it was he who drove them away.  He was so kind!  He thought so much of my future that I still sit by his arm-chair and tell him what is happening to his Grizel.  I don’t speak aloud, of course; I scarcely say the words to myself even; and yet we seem to have long talks together.  I told him I had given you his coat.”

“Well, I don’t think he was pleased at that, Grizel.  I have had a feeling for some time that the coat dislikes me.  It scratched my hand the first time I put it on.  My hand caught in the hook of the collar, you will say; but no, that is not what I think.  In my opinion, the deed was maliciously done.  McQueen always distrusted me, you know, and I expect his coat was saying, ‘Hands off my Grizel.’”

She took it as quite a jest.  “He does not distrust you now,” she said, smiling.  “I have told him what I think of you, and though he was surprised at first, in the end his opinion was the same as mine.”

“Ah, you saw to that, Grizel!”

“I had nothing to do with it.  I merely told him everything, and he had to agree with me.  How could he doubt when he saw that you had made me so happy!  Even mamma does not doubt.”

“You have told her!  All this is rather eerie, Grizel.”

“You are not sorry, are you?” she asked, looking at him anxiously.  “Dr. McQueen wanted me to forget her.  He thought that would be best for me.  It was the only matter on which we differed.  I gave up speaking of her to him.  You are the only person I have mentioned her to since I became a woman; but I often think of her.  I am sure there was a time, before I was old enough to understand, when she was very fond of me.  I was her baby, and women can’t help being fond of their babies, even though they should never have had them.  I think she often hugged me tight.”

“Need we speak of this, Grizel?”

“For this once,” she entreated.  “You must remember that mamma often looked at me with hatred, and said I was the cause of all her woe; but sometimes in her last months she would give me such sad looks that I trembled, and I felt that she was picturing me growing into the kind of woman she wished so much she had not become herself, and that she longed to save me.  That is why I have told her that a good man loves me.  She is so glad, my poor dear mamma, that I tell her again and again, and she loves to hear it as much as I to tell it.  What she loves to hear most is that you really do want to marry me.  She is so fond of hearing that because it is what my father would never say to her.”

Tommy was so much moved that he could not speak, but in his heart he gave thanks that what Grizel said of him to her mamma was true at last.