Cynthia raised herself and sat straight, and her face flashed like a white flame.  “Were they harsh to her?” she demanded.  “Were they cruel?  Did they question her, and were they harsh and cruel because she would not tell?  Why did you not tell them yourself?  Why did you not, Lyman Risley?  Why did you not tell the whole story rather than have that child blamed?  Well, I will go myself.  I will go this minute.  They shall not blame that darling.  What do you think I care for myself?  Let them lynch me if they want to.  I will go this minute!” Cynthia sprang to her feet, but Risley, with a hoarse shout under his breath, caught hold of her and forced her back.

“For God’s sake, sit down, Cynthia!” he said.  “Didn’t you hear the door-bell?  Somebody is coming.”

The door-bell had in fact rung, and Cynthia had not noticed it.  She lay back in her chair as the door opened, and Mrs. Norman Lloyd entered.  “Good-evening, Cynthia,” she said, beamingly.  “I thought I would stop a few minutes on my way to meeting.  I’m rather early.  No, don’t get up,” as Cynthia rose.  “Don’t get up; I can only stay a minute.  Never mind about giving me a chair, Mr. Risley—­thank you.  Yes, this is a real comfortable chair.”  Mrs. Lloyd, seated where the firelight played over her wide sweep of rich skirts, and her velvet fur-trimmed cloak and plumed bonnet, beamed upon them with an expansive benevolence and kindliness.  She was a large, handsome, florid woman.  Her grayish-brown hair was carefully crimped, and looped back from her fat, pink cheeks, a fine shell-and-gold comb surmounted her smooth French twist, and held her bonnet in place.  She unfastened her cloak, and a diamond brooch at her throat caught the light and blazed red like a ruby.  She was the wife of Norman Lloyd, the largest shoe-manufacturer in the place.  There was between her and Cynthia a sort of relationship by marriage.  Norman Lloyd’s brother George had married Cynthia’s sister, who had died ten years before, and of whose little son, Robert, Cynthia had had the charge.  Now George, who was a lawyer in St. Louis, had married again.  Mrs. Norman had sympathized openly with Cynthia when the child was taken from Cynthia at his father’s second marriage.  “I call it a shame,” she had said, “giving that child to a perfect stranger to bring up, and I don’t see any need of George’s marrying again, anyway.  I don’t know what I should do if I thought Norman would marry again if I died.  I think one husband and one wife is enough for any man or woman if they believe in the resurrection.  It has always seemed to me that the answer to that awful question in the New Testament, as to whose wife that woman who had so many husbands would be in the other world, meant that people who had done so much marrying on earth would have to be old maids and old bachelors in heaven.  George ought to be ashamed of himself, and Cynthia ought to keep that child.”