They had walked well up into the Park, now they turned back; the sun was getting hot, first perambulators were making their appearance, and Norma loosened her light furs.
"So I am a Melrose!" she mused. And then, abruptly: "Chris, what is my name?"
"Melrose," he answered, flushing.
Her eyes asked a sudden, horrified question, and she took the answer from his look without a word. He saw the colour ebb from her face, leaving it very white.
"You said—they—my parents—were married, Chris?" she asked, painfully.
"Annie supposed they were. But he was not free!"
Norma did not speak again. In silence they crossed the Avenue, and went on down the shady side street. Chris, with chosen words and quietly, told her the story of Annie's girlhood, who and what her father had been, the bitter grief of her grandmother, the general hushing up of the whole affair. He watched her anxiously as he talked, for there was a drawn, set look to her face that he did not like.
"Why did Aunt Kate ever decide to bring me to my—my grandmother, after so many years?" she asked.
"I'm sure I don't know that. Alice and I have fancied that Kate might have kept in touch with your father all this time, and that he might be dead now, and not likely to—make trouble."
"That is it," Norma agreed, quickly. "Because not long before she came to see Aunt Marianna she had had some sort of news—from Canada, I think. An old friend was dead; I remember it as if it were yesterday."