Perhaps--some day--we might look at them together." Her voice shook a little.
"You have never looked at them ?" "Never." "But why, dearest ?" "It always seemed to make papa so unhappy--anything to do with his old name.

Oliver!"-- she turned upon him suddenly, and for the first time she clung to him, hiding her face against his shoulder--"Oliver!--I don't know what made him unhappy--I don't know why he changed his name.
Sometimes I think--there may have been some terrible thing between him--and my mother." He put his arm round her, close and tenderly.
"What makes you think that ?" Then he whispered to her--"Tell your lover--your husband--tell him everything." She shrank in delicious tremor from the great word, and it was a few moments before she could collect her thoughts.

Then she said--still resting against him in the dark--and in a low rapid voice, as though she followed the visions of an inner sense: "She died when I was only four.

I just remember--it is almost my first recollection of anything--seeing her carried up-stairs--" She broke off.
"And oh! it's so strange!--" "Strange?
She was ill ?" "Yes, but--what I seem to remember never explains itself--and I did not dare to ask papa.

She hadn't been with us--for a long time.