I.

"Now, mother dear, you are all comfortable, aren't you? Here is your Prayer-Book. See, I have put the roses over on the chest of drawers; I don't be lieve you'll notice the fragrance here."

Mrs. Drayton moved her head languidly and glanced about. "Yes, as comfortable as I can be. But I'm used to being uncomfortable. I think perhaps you might move my chair just a little further.from the windows, Lyssie. Might n't I feel a draft here?"

This was too important a question for a mere "yes" or "no." Alicia Drayton knelt down beside her mother, and leaned her fresh young cheek towards the closed window. "I don't feel the slightest air, dear," she said anxiously.

"Ah, well, you! I suppose you don't. What color you have, Lyssie! I don't see why I haven't some of your health. I'm sure, when you were born, I gave you all of mine."

"If you would just go out a little bit more?" Alicia suggested hopefully.

"Oh, my dear, don't be foolish," said Mrs. Drayton. "Go out! How can I go out? It tires me to walk across the room. Yes, you had better move my chair. I'm sure there is a little air." "Well," Alicia said cheerfully, "there! Can you look out of the window if I put you as far away from it as this?"

"I don't care about looking out of the window," sighed Mrs. Drayton; "there is nothing to see; and I'm going to read

my chapter as soon as you have gone. I'll tell you what you may do, Lyssie. You may go over and ask Susy Carr to come in some time this morning. If she is out anywhere on the farm, see if you can't find her, and tell her I hope she'll come. It's very foolish in me, but I don't like to be alone. I think I feel my loneliness more as I grow older."

"I wish papa were going to be at home this summer," Lyssie said. "Of course it's lonely for you with only me."

"I was n't finding fault with your father," Mrs. Drayton answered quickly, "and I have no complaint to make when I have you; but now Cecil and Philip are coming, I suppose I sha'n't see anything of you."

"Of course you will; and Cecil and Philip and Molly, too."

"Oh, don't call the child by that ridiculous name!" said Molly's grandmother, or rather, her step-grandmother, "though her real name is ugly enough, poor child. Why Cecil should have named the baby after Philip's mother, when she never knew her, and could n't have had any affection for her, I never could understand."

Mrs. Drayton's unspoken inference that it would have been more fitting to have given her name to the child did not escape Alicia; but inferences are generally best left without comment, and she only said, "Well, dear, everything is in order now, so I'll run up to Cecil's. Eliza Todd is to bring a woman to help her with the windows, but I'm going

to take the covers off the pictures, and just see to the finishing touches. I think everything will be fixed by the time they get here; and I'll stop and ask Miss Susan to come in and cheer you up."

"Very well," said Mrs. Drayton, with that weary closing of the eyes which every one who has had the care of an invalid knows too well. "I want everything to be nice for Cecil, I'm sure. But it's a little bitter to be so much alone."

"Oh, I'll be back by dinner time," Alicia reminded her brightly. "Do you want me to take a bunch of poppies from you for Cecil's tea table?"

"Why, of course," said Mrs. Drayton, opening her eyes. "Cecil does n't really care for me

No, don't interrupt me, Lyssie! I know. But no one can say I don't do everything in the world for your dear papa's daughter. No one can say she is n't exactly like my own child.” Why, of course," said Alicia soothingly.

66

"I don't know why you say ' of course'!" cried Mrs. Drayton. "I'm sure there are a great many stepmothers who might have made a difference."

"I only meant of course you loved Ceci," Lyssie explained.

"I remember," Mrs. Drayton proceeded, with a hint of tears in her voice, "I remember perfectly well, once, when you were both little things, somebody asked Susy Carr' which was Mr. Drayton's child by his first wife.' I think that shows how I treated Cecil."

Cecil's stepmother almost sobbed, and her daughter had to stop to kiss and comfort her, though it was getting warmer every moment, and the walk to her sister's house was long and sunny.

"Oh, go, go!" said Mrs. Drayton. "I felt you look over my head at the clock. I'm sure I don't want to interfere with your plans about Cecil. I suppose you've told Esther to bring me my eggnog at eleven? Give my love to Philip. I must say he's never let Cecil teach him to be disrespectful to me; he

always pays me proper attention; I must say that, in spite of Cecil's neglect."

Alicia Drayton was only twenty-one, but she excelled in the art, which is taught to perfection in a sick-room, of knowing when to ignore complaints. A certain angelic common sense gave her at once discrimination and tenderness, those two qualities which must be together for the full development of either.

"Yes, Esther will bring the eggnog at eleven," she said cheerfully. "Goodby, mother darling." She gave an anxious thought, as she went downstairs, to that possible draft; and her face sobered as she stood for a moment in the open doorway of the dark, cool hall, and saw the blaze of June sunshine over the garden. The thought of her mother sitting all alone, in the half-light of lowered curtains and bowed shutters, struck on the girl's tender heart with a sort of shame at her own young vigor. She knew how Mrs. Drayton's pallid face and weak eyes would have shrunk away from what she always spoke of as the "glare," and how the hot fragrance of the roses would have made her poor, heavy head ache. "But it does seem as though she might look out of the window," Lyssie thought, sighing. Yet she had been content to let her mother be comfortable in her own way. From which it will be seen that Miss Alicia Drayton was an unusual young woman. Indeed, very early in life this girl had displayed the pathetic common sense of the child whose mother's foolishness forces her into a discretion beyond her years. The village had acknowledged her merit long ago, acknowledged it with the slight condescension with which Old Chester commented upon Youth.

Mrs. Drayton, however, would have explained that an invalid could not be expected to think of such trivial things as accomplishments. "I've brought her up to be a good child," said Mrs. Drayton; and certainly nobody could deny that. In fact, Alicia's mother did very little beside read her Bible, and meditate over certain small good books of the nature of Gathered Pearls and Daily Foods. She kept a little stand at her elbow for her half dozen devotional, wellworn volumes. Thomas à Kempis was there, and her Prayer-Book, dear with use, and with flowers pressed between the pages of especially significant saints' days, and small marginal ejaculations scattered through the Psalter, ejaculations which Mrs. Drayton not infrequently read aloud to her callers. There was also upon the stand a little calendar, with a text, a hymn, and a prayer for each day. This was a distinct interest in the poor sick lady's life, for there was the element of surprise in tearing off each slip; she was apt to inclose an especially beautiful page to the correspondent to whom she chanced to be writing, and she would add "True!" or underline a word or phrase, to show how personal were these printed outbursts of religious feeling.

Her husband, compelled by ill health to live abroad, was greatly favored in this way. Yet he had been known to say that "Frances's goodness was the worst part of her." Indeed, irreverent lips whispered that Mrs. Drayton's goodness was the peculiar disease which needed European treatment.

"But then, why did he marry her, if he didn't want to live with her?" the village reflected. "Everybody knew what Fanny Dacie was. And why did he marry again, anyhow? His child by his first wife had a good home with the Ashurst Draytons. He had no need to marry again."

Mr. William Drayton, however, had thought differently.

After the calamity of his first wife's death, he had left the baby Cecil with his sister-in-law in Ashurst, and, dazed and bewildered by his grief, had gone away to forget. For several years he wandered aimlessly about the world. And when he drifted home again, and found Cecil, with her mother's eyes and her mother's name, which made him wince whenever he had to address her, - when he found her irritable and discontented among her cousins in Colonel Drayton's household, why, then he married again. He did not love the child, but it was hers, so it must have a home. He took Cecil and went back to Old Chester, and opened up the house he had closed when his wife died. What the associations were, what strange certainties came to him of that dead wife's sympathy in his search for a new wife, he did not confide to any one, least of all to Miss Frances Dacie, while he sought to impress upon her that his happiness and her welfare, a more truthful man might have reversed these adjectives, his happiness and her welfare depended upon their marriage. Miss Dacie was thirty-one; she yielded to his entreaty without that foolish hesitation which younger ladies sometimes deem necessary. Then, having provided a mother for little Cecil, William Drayton found, in a year or two, that his health demanded foreign travel.

"And the unfortunate part of it is," said Mr. Drayton, forty years old, gray, blasé, standing with his back to the fireplace in the Rev. Dr. Lavendar's study,

"the unfortunate part of it is, iny wife is such a wretched invalid (she has never been well, you know, since little Lyssie was born) she is n't able to go with me. She could n't stand traveling, and traveling, King says, is what I need. My only consolation is that I can live so much more cheaply in Europe, which of course is a good thing for Frances and the girls."

And thus it was that Mr. William Drayton became a fugitive from matrimony.

He did give a thought sometimes to the task which Miss Dacie had assumed because of her desire to promote his happiness. But he consoled himself by reflecting upon her welfare. "She likes living in the Poindexter house," he thought, his cold, heavy eyes closing in a smile, "and it's a great satisfaction to her to be married, even if she does have to wrestle with Cecilla; but I've no doubt that little monkey, Alicia, will improve Cecilla."

That Cecilla needed to be improved no one could deny. Her aunt, Mrs. Henry Drayton of Ashurst, used to testify to that emphatically.

"I had that child seven years," she would say, "and nobody can tell me anything about her. She is the strangest creature! - though I'm sure I tried to make her a good child. Poor Frances! I must say I pity her."

Indeed, Mrs. Henry Drayton had continued to try to make Cecil a good child even after she had handed her over, "with a sigh of relief," to Mrs. William.

"Cecil, my dear, you ought not to call your mamma 'Mrs. Drayton,'" she instructed her niece.

"My mamma is dead, and I don't love Mrs. Drayton," Cecil answered, with a little pause between her slow sentences.

"That has nothing to do with it," said Mrs. Henry. "She is your father's wife, and you should treat her with respect even if you don't love her; and it is n't respectful to say Mrs. Drayton.'" "I'd just as lief say Miss Dacie,' the child said, "but I won't say 'mamma,' because she is n't my mamma."

Her aunt gasped, and cried, "You are a naughty little girl! Of course you are not to say 'Miss Dacie;' she is your papa's wife, and ”

"How many wives can papa have?" Cecil interposed calmly; "my mother is his wife."

"Your mother is a saint in heaven! at least I hope she is," said Mrs. Henry, horrified. "If I were your mamma, I'd send you to bed without any supper."

"I'm glad papa did n't marry you; that would have been worse than Mrs. Drayton," her niece announced.

And then Mrs. Henry wept with Mrs. William, and said she pitied her with all her heart; and nobody was more rejoiced than she, when, at eighteen, Cecil, just home from boarding-school, became engaged to Philip Shore.

"I rejoice on your account, dear Frances," she wrote to Cecil's stepmother. "What a relief it must be, after your noble devotion of these eleven years, at last to hand her over to a husband, though I must say I pity the young man ! The colonel and I are delighted to hear what an estimable person he is, though I'm sorry he has n't expectations from his uncle. However, Cecil has money enough for both. I hope, for your sake, they will be married at once."

But they were not married at once. Philip spent three years in one of the Paris studios, and Mrs. Drayton was still obliged to endure her step-daughter's indolence, and willful ways, and occasional black tempers; and also her cold indifference, not only to herself, but, it must be admitted, to Old Chester!

When at last she married Philip Shore, Old Chester drew a breath of satisfaction. "Dear Philip," it said, "such a really superior young man! Now poor Cecil will improve."

But, except that Philip took her away for a year, no improvement was visible. She came back when Molly was born, and then everybody said they hoped the baby would make a difference in Cecil. It did; it added to the strange, passionate, untrained nature the passion of maternity.

"Though I don't care now what they say about me," Cecil said languidly to her husband, looking down at the small head upon her arm; "I have this! And really, Philip, you must admit I am of some value to Old Chester? I give it something to gossip about. If I were