"And you keep her photograph under the floor?"

"Yes; you don't see many about, do you?" he inquired with precocious bitterness.

There was not one to be seen downstairs. That I knew from my glimpse of the photograph under the floor; there was nothing like it on any of the walls, nothing so beautiful, nothing with that rather wild, defiant expression which I saw again in Ronnie at this moment.

"But why under the floor?" I persisted, guessing vaguely though I did.

"You won't tell anybody you saw it there?"

"Not a soul."

"You promise?"

"Solemnly."

"You won't say a single word about it, if I tell you something?"

"Not a syllable."

"Well--then--it's because I don't want Daddy to see it, for fear----"

"--it would grieve him?" I suggested as the end of his broken sentence. And I held my breath in the sudden hope that I might be right.

"For fear he tears it up!" the boy said harshly. "He did that once before, and this is the last I've got."

I made no comment, and there were no further confidences from Ronnie. So many things I wanted to know and could not ask! I could only hold my peace and Ronnie's hot hand, until it pinched mine in sudden warning, as the whole house lept under a springy step upon the stairs.

"Not a word to anybody, you know, Mr. Gillon?"

"Not one, to a single soul, Ronnie!"

But it was a heavy seal that was thus placed upon my lips; heavy as lead when I discussed the child with Uvo Delavoye; and that was almost every minute that we spent together for days to come.

For Ronnie became very ill.

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