Do not, dear reader, wholly bury poor Clara under the weight of your virtuous indignation. She had an unfortunate disposition, that was all. The worthless attracted, the worthy annoyed her. She was no more to blame than the child who seizes some pernicious sweetmeat and refuses even to look at the nourishing and expensive meal which awaits his pleasure.

This much, at least, it is desired that the reader keep clearly in mind when judging Clara Allardi. Both in her "mariage de convenance" and in her "love-match" she made the best of what she had; tried not to visit upon Lowden Thayer the dislike which marriage with him had awakened; endeavoured to bear patiently with Guido Allardi's vagaries and steadily refused to leave him even when all her own money had been squandered and when he was incapable of making enough to support her, comfortably. This last, though, can scarcely be attributed to her for righteousness. The real reason that she stayed with the Italian was because she could not leave him; she was like a parasite, drawing her very breath through him and unable to exist away from him.

Poor Clara Allardi! "Blind fool of fate and slave of circumstance!" When her unloved daughter responded to the letter which had caused her such mingled pain and joy, she found the former favourite of fortune living—or, rather, dying—in the modern equivalent of the historic garret, a squalid tenement in an unfashionable and ragged quarter of the great city of New York. Her mother's husband, Lynn did not see; the strain of attending to his sick wife had proved unsupportable and, after a short time, he had taken his departure, leaving no address. Lynn hoped that he would not return until she had left New York; she felt, seeing her mother and remembering what that mother had been in the past, that she could scarcely have borne the burden of his presence. Her fears, however, were unnecessary; Clara Allardi had been dead several days before that husband returned and his absence had troubled Lynn more than his presence could have done; for it was from him that she was obliged to ask the boon which crippled her future yet filled her life for many years.

This, however, is anticipating. We must return to the time when Lynn took up her abode in her mother's "home" once more and did what she could for the comfort of that mother. She had complied with Clara's request in so far that she had told her guardians of her destination; she had gone to the principal of the school where she taught and had asked for leave of absence, offering to pay a substitute; then had packed a valise and left a note for her aunt, explaining her mother's condition and begging that her uncle would not follow or bother about her. This was merely a figure of speech on Lynn's part; Horace Thayer was a man who never bothered about anything in the universe but himself. Lynn realized, however, that her aunt, who had a real affection for her, ought to know her whereabouts and the object of her journey; though, in the face of her mother's strangely insistent entreaties, she was strongly tempted to use a long-standing New York invitation from a school friend, as a pretext.

She found her mother delirious and very weak. She talked incoherently, but recognized Lynn and greeted her with something like eagerness, in the way that one would greet a useful friend rather than in the way that one would greet a child whom one had not seen for many years. Lynn, however, had steeled herself to bear what she had anticipated would not be an especially joyous reunion and took stoically whatever arrows the joyous fates chose to drive in her direction.

Must the truth be confessed? It was not the thought of seeing her mother before she died that had formed Lynn's chief object in hastening to New York. While she would, in any case, have used every effort to further her mother's dying wish, it must be confessed that there was little more than a bitter, dull grief in the prospect of seeing the latter, again. But there was another, darling prospect. The child! the little boy who had been three when she left him, would be ten, now. Oh, to see him, again! the one being who had always clung to her, loved her, satisfied her. The dear, unutterably dear little mortal whose arrival into the world had changed the face of life for her. How had she lived without him all these years? she wondered; was he as beautiful as ever, as full of life and sweetness? and—had he come to resemble his father as much as he had promised to do? The thought depressed her for a moment; she remembered how, as a child, it had infuriated her to hear people remark upon the wonderful likeness between Allardi and his infant son. Then her brow cleared. He was really more like her mother than his father, she insisted to herself; as he had her high-bred clearness of outline, so he would inherit her delicate refinement, her ineradicable fastidiousness of mind. She lost herself in hopeful musing, almost forgetting in the joy of seeing her little brother once more that her mother's grave would probably be dug before she returned again to Montreal.

CHAPTER VI

"LIFE AT ITS END"

The April morning broke softly, implacably chill. There was a hint of cruelty in the frolicsome spring breeze that danced through the half-opened window, a hint of sorrow in the few faint tremulous notes of "half-awakened birds," preparing once more to face the strange world of which they knew so little. There was something ominous in the softness of the spring air, something that chilled one's blood with a faint terror.

Over the dreary tenements and horrible, rearing buildings of New York broke the pitiless day. The lovely rose of dawn softened all that was bare and bleak and gave it a semblance of tenderness and repose.