“Lynda—­are you there, dear?”

It had been a frequent, pathetic question during the month of illness.  Lynda had been summoned from school.  Brace was still at his studies.

“Yes, mother, right here!”

“You are always—­right here!  Lyn, once I thought I could not stand it, and I was going to run away—­going in the night.  As I passed your door you awoke and asked for a drink of water.  I gave it, trembling lest you might notice my hat and coat; but you did not—­you only said:  ’What would I do if I woke up some night and didn’t have a mother?’ Lyn, dear, I went back and—­stayed!”

Lynda had thought her mother’s mind wandering so she patted the seeking hands and murmured gently to her.  Then, suddenly: 

“Lyn, when I married your father I thought I loved him—­but I loved another!  I’ve done the best I could for you all; I never let any one know; I dared not give a sign, but I want you—­by and by—­to go to—­William Truedale!  You need not explain—­just go; you will be my gift to him—­my last and only gift.”

Startled and horrified, Lynda had listened, understood, and grown old while her mother spoke....

Then came the night when she awoke—­and found no mother!  She was never the same.  She returned to school but gave up the idea of going to college.  After her graduation she made a home for the father who now—­in the light of her secret knowledge—­she comprehended for the first time.  All her life she had wondered about him.  Wondered why she and Brace had not loved and honoured him as they had their mother.  His weakness, his superficiality, had been dominated by the wife who, having accepted her lot, carried her burden proudly to the end!

Brace went to college and, during his last year there, his father died; then, confronting a future rich in debts but little else, he and Lynda consequently turned their education to account and were soon self-supporting, full of hope and the young joy of life.

Lynda—­her mother’s secret buried deep in her loyal, tender heart—­began soon after her return from school to cultivate old William Truedale, much to that crabbed gentleman’s surprise and apparent confusion.  There was some excuse for the sudden friendship, for Brace during preparatory school and college had formed a deep and sincere attachment for Conning Truedale and at vacation time the two boys and Lynda were much together.  To be sure the visiting was largely one-sided, as the gloomy house of the elder Truedale offered small inducement for sociability; but Lynda managed to wedge her way into the loneliness and dreariness and eventually for reasons best known to herself became the one bright thing in the old man’s existence.