From the court-room she was carried straight to the hospital. The doctor, summoned hastily to attend her, told them gravely that it was probably the beginning of an attack of brain fever. There was never any telling where that would end. The strain of the last week had been very severe. She should have the most skilful and experienced nursing that could be secured, and constant medical attention.

Then, too, as Judge Kirtley hurriedly explained to Mrs. Pennybacker, who, having some confidence in her own ability as a nurse and a country woman's distrust of hospitals, had urged Margaret's removal to her own home, at the hospital she would be spared the further strain of seeing the child taken away. It would be hard for her to come back to a house without him, but not such an ordeal as his forcible removal would be. After this Mrs. Pennybacker said no more.

With Judge Kirtley she herself had taken Margaret to the hospital, the girl still mercifully oblivious to all around her. Then she had returned to Massachusetts Avenue to get Philip ready for his removal to Elmhurst. Life seemed to be moving on pretty rapidly just now.

When she reached the house the child was gone. Mr. De Jarnette had come for him almost immediately, Bess reported.

"Did he object to going?"

"No. I told him in Mr. De Jarnette's presence that his mama was sick and he was going to his Uncle Richard's for a little visit. I guess I emphasized visit, maybe. I think Margaret had prepared Philip for it. I heard her tell him last night that perhaps he would go to his Uncle Richard's for a while, and that he must be a brave little boy and not cry."

"I know. I think she lost courage last night. Perhaps she had a presentiment of how it was to be. I am glad she took that way of preparing the child. Did he cry?"

"No. But his chin quivered, the way it does, you know, when he tries to keep from crying."

"Poor little thing!"

"Grandma," said Bess, thoughtfully, "I don't believe Mr. De Jarnette is going to be unkind to Philip. He didn't say much, but he seemed to be looking out for him—asked if he hadn't some favorite playthings that could be taken along. You wouldn't imagine his thinking of such a thing as that, would you? Isn't he a strange man?"

"Incomprehensible, to me. What did you give him?"

"His train of cars and the little red wagon. And Grandma! I gave Mr. De Jarnette that picture of Margaret and Philip together—the one, you know, that we call 'the Madonna.' That is the sweetest thing she ever had taken, with Philip's baby face pressed up against hers. I told him it might help Philip at night to have it to look at if he was homesick."

"Bess!"

"Yes'm, I did! I knew it would make him howl. I hope it will! Any way, I thought the picture would do Mr. De Jarnette good."

"Bess," said Mrs. Pennybacker, in a burst of grandmotherly admiration which she did not always display so openly, "for a young girl you certainly have a great deal of sense. I hope Philip won't be too brave. I'd like to see Mr. Richard De Jarnette with a homesick child on his hands. And if he doesn't have one to-night I'll miss my guess. Bess! There's Maria—and that idiotic little poodle!... Oh, dear! I did hope I should be spared that to-day."

Looking from the window Bess saw Mrs. Van Dorn alighting from her carriage, the footman holding what looked like a jet-black silky ball with dashes of pink about it. He deposited it carefully in his mistress's waiting arms.

"That's Toddlekyns!" announced Mrs. Pennybacker. "I asked Maria the other day why she didn't give the thing a decent Christian dog's name. 'Toddlekyns' sounds to me like a weak attenuated cat."

Toddlekyns was in reality a very rare variety of Russian poodle, upon which Mrs. Van Dorn was just now lavishing the wealth of her unattached affections. Mrs. Pennybacker had found him on her return to the capital occupying so large a space in the center of the Van Dorn stage that her sense of proportion had been greatly outraged. She never passed him without wishing to administer a surreptitious kick that would send him into the wings.

The years had dealt kindly with Mrs. Van Dorn. Or perhaps it was that her emotions had been of that flabby kind that do not leave their impress on the face. She gave herself careful grooming. Once when she discovered an incipient line about the corner of her eye she straightened it out with court plaster over night, not sleeping much in consequence, and massaged it for two hours the next morning, excusing herself from attending divine service by saying firmly, "A woman's first duty is to herself. I simply will not have wrinkles."

"I thought I must come right over and hear all about it," she exclaimed, sinking gracefully into an arm-chair and lifting Toddlekyns to her lap. "So the case went against her. I heard something about it from Mrs. Somerville. And she will really have to give him up! Too bad! Can I see her? I suppose she feels dreadfully just at first.... At the hospital? You don't say so.... Brain fever? Why, they always die of that, don't they?... Well, I feel very sorry for her, though I must say I sympathize with Richard too."

"On what account?" demanded Mrs. Pennybacker.

"Oh, because everybody is so down on him. It has almost broken off the intimacy between him and Dr. Semple, they say."

"Good for Dr. Semple!"

"Well—I don't know—I suppose I am broader-minded than some people. I can always see both sides."

"So can I when there are two sides. This case has but one."

"Well," said Mrs. Van Dorn, in an argumentative tone that was new to her, "anyway, I think it was very natural that Richard should want to carry out his brother's wishes. But," she cast her eyes down modestly and toyed with Toddlekyns' silky ears,—"wouldn't you almost think he would have to have somebody to help him—in bringing this child up?"

"Humph!" came from her aunt.

"He has Mammy Cely," said Bess, innocently.

"Oh, Mammy Cely—an old negro—yes. But anybody that has a child to rear would feel the need, I should think, of a sympathizing—well I don't care, I think if Richard De Jarnette is really going to take Philip, he should look out for somebody to be a mother to him."

"And I think he had better let him stay with the mother the Lord gave him!" cried Bess, indignantly, with a flash of her grandmother's spirit.

Mrs. Pennybacker contented herself with looking keenly at her niece over her spectacles. There was something about the look that embarrassed Mrs. Van Dorn.

"I don't want you to think I don't sympathize with Margaret, Aunt Mary." she began. "It isn't that, at all. I feel awfully sorry for her. I know she will feel lonely at first. I thought about it at home—how lonely I should be if I should lose Toddlekyns—and I just made up my mind to let her have him for a few days—till the worst of it is over. I may yet, when she gets back from the hospital."

Mrs. Pennybacker shut her lips firmly together and shook her head.

"I wouldn't do it Maria," she said, hastily.

She moved over to the window and took up her knitting, leaving Mrs. Van Dorn to Bess's entertainment. It was hard for anything to hold her thoughts long to-day away from the child of her adoption. She had come back from the hospital sorely troubled about her and was falling back, from life-long habit, upon her inevitable resource when burdened—work. But as the knitting needles flew in her swift fingers, her thoughts were with Margaret and her fight against fate.

How would Margaret bear it now that the hope which had been a sheet anchor to her soul was gone? She had been very brave through it all, even in these last trying days but it had been in the confident belief that no court in the land would decree against her. With that prop gone upon what would she stay her soul? She recalled the girl's passionate outburst in the court-room with apprehension. It was not like her to forget time and place and the proprieties like that. She thought of the doctor's words, "You never can tell how a thing like this will end." She knew that it ended sometimes in death—and sometimes in——

Mrs. Pennybacker did not finish it. She would not acknowledge even to herself the fear that was tugging at her heart. Margaret had been under a fearful mental strain. Would she be able to stand up against it? Would her physical vigor be such as to enable her to—She broke off again in her thoughts. She was thinking in fragments to-day. Suppose the next trial of the case—in whatever form it would come—should go against her too. Had she the strength of will, of character, to recast her life still another time and live it out without her child? She had been amazed at the buoyancy of the girl's nature which had enabled her to rise above her sorrows and thrust them beneath her feet. But then she had Philip! Now——

"Aunt Mary," said Mrs. Van Dorn, turning to her and breaking in upon these somber thoughts somewhat abruptly, "I must say that I was very much surprised at Margaret De Jarnette's conduct in the court-room to-day. Mrs. Somerville was telling me about it. Of course people are different, and I don't expect everybody to have my high standards, but it seems to me that her allusions were decidedly indelicate—not to say coarse. Mrs. Somerville says she was actually violent—swore, I should call it. Anyway she said 'hell' or 'damn' or some of those things that nobody ought ever to say but a man. Mrs. Somerville didn't seem to feel so, but I am surprised at Margaret. Such bad form! And before gentlemen too!"

Mrs. Pennybacker's needles clicked. She was knitting fast, and without much regard to stitches dropped. Those needles were her safety valves. Her lips just now indicated that steam was at high pressure.... It was positively no use to talk to Maria!

"Of course it is hard for her to give up her child," Mrs. Van Dorn continued with the air of one willing to make every reasonable concession—"any woman can understand a mother's feelings—(come here, darling, let mama tie his little wibbons)—but to say 'hell'—"

"Maria!" Mrs. Pennybacker gave her yarn a jerk that sent the ball on one of its perennial journeys across the room—"if you will excuse my saying so, it is not very becoming in you to criticise Margaret De Jarnette just at this time. A woman who has never been anything more than step-mother to a poodle is not authority on maternal feelings!"