This was the question which for years she had expected him to ask--one to which she had framed a hundred imaginary answers.

When as a baby he first began to talk she had determined to tell him she was not his mother, and so get him gradually accustomed to the conditions of his birth.

But every day she loved him the more, and every day she had put it off.

To-day it was no easier.

He was too young, she knew, to take in its full meaning, even if she could muster up the courage to tell him the half she was willing to tell him--that his mother was her friend and on her sick-bed had entrusted her child to her care.