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 “Yes. You look as if you had seen a ghost—an army of ghosts.”

The same snarling smile drew up Charlotte’s ip. “I’ve seen Joe,” she said.

“Well?—Oh, Chatty,” Delia exclaimed, abruptly illuminated, “you don’t mean to say that you're going to let any little thing in Joe’s past—? Not that I’ve ever heard the least hint; never. But even if there were. .. ” She drew a deep breath, and bravely proceeded to extremities. “Even if you’ve heard that he’s been. . . that he’s had a child—of course he would have provided for it before. . .”

The girl shook her head. “I know: you needn’t go on. ‘Men will be men’; but it’s not that.” “Tell me what it is.”

Charlotte Lovell looked about the sunny prosperous room as if it were the image of her world, and that world [ 28 ]