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shaken by the coughing that the slightest exertion seemed to bring about.
    "Please give me your address."
    There was hope in her eyes as she opened her reticule and took out a slip of paper. "I have it here. You will let me know. . . ?"
    The sound of wheels on the cobbled street announced the arrival of Vince and the cab. Together they assisted her inside, and Faro's last sight of Maureen Hymes was a frail hand raised in his direction, and lips forming the word, "Promise . . . promise ..."
    As he closed the front door and walked slowly upstairs again, Faro realised that he had never before seen how his stepson reacted to a woman in distress, even a female long past thirty. He had rarely seen him in young female company, except as a boy at parties, bullying and tormenting small girls into screaming fits. Handsome he was, even then, but under that angelic appearance a frightful bully, who had never been asked to parties a second time.
    After all, few children are little angels, and he included his own dear Rose and Emily.
    As he sat down and penned a loving response to their postcard, he was glad they had each other as comfort in their bereavement. Strange, although they adored each other now, Rose had been an extremely jealous two-year-old. When Emily lay newly born and rather raw-looking in her mother's arms, Rose had studied her carefully. "She's not very pretty, is she? I like my dolls better than her. Can we send her back now, Mama?"
    At least his daughters were the product of a happy and secure life. One day they would recover from the shattering grief of losing their mother. Born of their parents' wedded love, they had not suffered the stigma of bastardy which Vince had doubtless endured most painfully in his childhood. Even though his mother's little lapse was overlooked by the adult population, he imagined that the crofter children would not be ready to forgive so easily when they had the opportunity to hurt so cruelly. Doubtless Vince's difficult childhood had its roots in an ill-treatment he would be too proud to discuss with his mother.
    When Vince returned. Faro looked at him gratefully. Thank God his fears—and Lizzie's—about the way the lad would turn out were ended. He only wished she could see her son now. How proud she would be of the man he had become.
    "That was very good of you, lad," he said as Vince followed him across the hall.
    "It was the least I could do for a dying woman. Her life is now measured in days, hours, even, and I doubt exceedingly if she will reach Glasgow alive. She will certainly never return to Edinburgh." He stood with his back to the blaze, since dining in a fireless room at the height of summer was unthinkable to Mrs. Brook. "A good blaze is as nourishing as a good meal" was one of her most frequent quotations.
    The furniture which Faro had inherited with the house was handsome and mellowed with age and usage, in keeping with an elderly doctor's establishment, and the massive Sheraton sideboard had once accommodated an army of chafing dishes. For convenience, he and Vince sat together, easing Mrs. Brook's serving arrangements and also the discomfort of being isolated at either end of a very long and exceedingly well-polished table intended to seat members of the large family Faro knew he was unlikely now to produce.
    Mrs. Brook stood by the sideboard, waiting impatiently to serve Scotch broth and a saddle of roast lamb.
    Faro's hunger pangs suddenly vanished at the sight of food in such large quantities. "We should have invited Miss Hymes to dine with us."
    "In that case she would never have boarded the Glasgow train. Besides, I fancy that she is also well beyond consuming solid food. The journey must have cost her dearly, Stepfather. As a matter of fact, I suspect that she sealed her own death warrant."
    While Vince ate his second helping of rice pudding with boyish relish and delight, and Mrs. Brook closed the shutters against the dangerous vapours of the night, Faro told Vince