"
Gilder looked at her with a newly dawning respect; then his
shrewdness suggested a retort.
"Do you want my son to learn what you are?" he said.
Mary laughed. There was something dreadful in that burst of
spurious amusement.
"Why not?" she answered. "I'm ready to tell him myself."
Then Gilder showed the true heart of him, in which love for his
boy was before all else. He found himself wholly at a loss
before the woman's unexpected reply.
"But I don't want him to know," he stammered. "Why, I've spared
the boy all his life. If he really loves you--it will----"
At that moment, the son himself entered hurriedly from the
hallway. In his eagerness, he saw no one save the woman whom he
loved. At his entrance, Mary rose and moved backward a step
involuntarily, in sheer surprise over his coming, even though she
had known he must come--perhaps from some other emotion, deeper,
hidden as yet even from herself.
The young man, with his wholesome face alight with tenderness,
went swiftly to her, while the other three men stood silent,
motionless, abashed by the event.
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