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her sleeping in mother's room! I couldn't stand that. I should——"

She stopped abruptly. She was trembling.

"I don't think there's any fear of that," said Anthony. "He still loves your mother. I'm not talking merely to please you. It's the best thing about him. And he loves you. He'd think of all that."

"He didn't think of it when she lived," Betty answered.

They were in the long dining-room and had just finished dinner. Mr. Mowbray had telegraphed that he was coming home that evening and would want to see Anthony. But he had not yet arrived. She was looking at the portrait of her mother over the great mantel-piece.

"If ever I marry," she said, "I shall pray God to send me a man who will like me and think of me as a good friend and comrade."

They neither spoke for a while.

"It was a love-match on both sides, between your father and your mother, wasn't it?" asked Anthony.

"No woman ever had a more perfect lover, so my mother told me," she answered with a curious laugh. "For the first five years. I remember waking in the night. My mother was kneeling by my bed with her head buried in her arms. I didn't