{32}

“Poor girl,” Delia thought, “how old and ugly she looks! More than ever like an old maid; and she doesn’t seem to realize in the least that she’ll never have another chance.”

“You must try to be sensible, Chatty dear. After all, one’s own babies have the first claim.”

“That’s just it.” The girl seized her fiercely by the wrists. “How can I give up my own baby?”

“Your—your—?” Delia’s world again began to waver under her. “Which of the poor little waifs, dearest, do you call your own baby?” she questioned patiently.{33}

{33}

Charlotte looked her straight in the eyes. “I call my own baby my own baby.”

“Your own—? Take care—you’re hurting my wrists, Chatty!” Delia freed herself, forcing a smile. “Your own—?”

“My own little girl. The one that Jessamine and Cyrus—”

“Oh—” Delia Ralston gasped.

The two cousins sat silent, facing each other; but Delia looked away. It came over her with a shudder of repugnance that such things, even if they had to be said, should not have been spoken in her bedroom, so near the spotless nursery across the passage. Mechanically she smoothed the organ-like folds of her silk skirt, which her cousin’s embrace had tumbled. Then she looked again at Charlotte’s eyes, and her own melted.

“Oh, poor Chatty—my poor Chatty!” She held out her arms to her cousin.{34}

{34}

II

THE shepherd continued to steal his kiss from the shepherdess, and the clock in the fallen trunk continued to tick out the minutes.

T

Delia, petrified, sat unconscious of their passing, her cousin clasped to her. She was dumb with the horror and amazement of learning that her own blood ran in the veins of the anonymous foundling, the “hundred dollar baby” about whom New York had so long furtively jested and conjectured. It was her first contact with the nether side of the smooth social surface, and she sickened at the thought that such things 

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