“I will go in and see your aunt,” Ellen said to Robert, regarding him as she spoke with a startled expression.  It had flashed through her mind that Miss Lennox had possibly come to confess the secret of so many years ago, and she shrank with terror as before the lowering of some storm of spirit.  She knew how little was required to lash her mother’s violent nature into fury.  “She was not—?” she began to say to Robert, then she stopped; but he understood.  “Don’t be afraid, Miss Brewster,” he said, kindly.  “It is not a matter of by-gones, but the future.  My aunt has a plan for you which I think you will like.”

Ellen looked at him wonderingly, but she went with him across the moonlit yard into the house.

She found Miss Cynthia Lennox, fair and elegant in a filmy black gown, and a broad black hat draped with lace and violets shading her delicate, clear-cut face, and her father and mother.  Fanny’s eyes were red.  She looked as if she had been running—­in fact, one could easily hear her breathe across the room.  “Ellen, here is Miss Lennox,” she said.  Ellen approached the lady, who rose, and the two shook hands.  “Good-evening, Miss Brewster,” said Cynthia, in the same tone which she might have used towards a society acquaintance.  Ellen would never have known that she had heard the voice before.  As she remembered it, it was full of intensest vibrations of maternal love and tenderness and protection beyond anything which she had ever heard in her own mother’s voice.  Now it was all gone, and also the old look from her eyes.  Cynthia Lennox was, in fact, quite another woman to the young girl from what she had been to the child.  In truth, she cared not one whit for Ellen, but she was possessed with a stern desire of atonement, and far stronger than her love was the appreciation of what that mother opposite must have suffered during that day and night when she had forcibly kept her treasure.  The agony of that she could present to her consciousness very vividly, but she could not awaken the old love which had been the baby’s for this young girl.  Cynthia felt much more affection for Fanny than for Ellen.  When she had unfolded her plan for sending Ellen to college, and Fanny had almost gone hysterical with delight, she found it almost impossible to keep her tears back.  She knew so acutely how this other woman felt that she almost seemed to lose her own individuality.  She began to be filled with a vicarious adoration of Ellen, which was, however, dissipated the moment she actually saw her.  She realized that this grown-up girl, who could no longer be cuddled and cradled, was nothing to her, but her sympathy with the mother remained.

Ellen remained standing after she had greeted Cynthia.  Robert went over to the mantle-piece and stood leaning against it.  He was completely puzzled and disturbed by the whole affair.  Ellen looked at Cynthia, then at her parents.  “Ellen, come here, child,” said her father, suddenly, and Ellen went over to him, sitting on the plush sofa beside her mother.