hich reposes a red plush photograph
album; that there is also a set of fine parlor furniture, with
various devices in the way of silken and lace scarfs over the
corners and backs of the chairs and sofa, and that there is a
tapestry carpet; that in the sitting-room is a fine crushed-plush
couch, and a multiplicity of rocking-chairs; that there is a
complete dining-set in the next room, the door of which stood open,
and even a side-board with red napkins, and a fine display of glass,
every whit as elegant in their estimation as your cut glass in
yours. The child's father owns his house and land free of
encumbrance. He told me so in the course of his artless boasting as
to what he might some day be able to do for the precious little
creature of his own flesh and blood; and the grandmother owns her
comfortable place next door, and she herself was dressed in black
silk, and I will swear the lace on her cap was real, and she wore a
great brooch containing hair of the departed, and it was set in
pearl. What are you going to do in the face of opulence like this,
Cynthia?"

Cynthia did not speak; her face looked as still as if it were carved
in ivory.

"Cynthia," said the man, in a harsh voice, "I did not dream you were
so broken up over losing that little boy of your sister's, poor
girl."

Cynthia still said nothing, but a tear rolled down her cheek. Lyman
Risley saw it, then he looked straight ahead, scowling over his
cigar. He seemed suddenly to realize in this woman whom he loved
something anomalous, yet lovely--a beauty, as it were, of deformity,
an over-development in one direction, though a direction of utter
grace and sweetness, like the lip of an orchid.

Why should she break her heart over a child whom she had never seen
before, and have no love and pity for the man who had laid his best
at her feet so long?

He saw at a flash the sweet yet monstrous imperfection of her, and
he loved her better for it.

Chapter IX

After Ellen's experience in running away, she dreamed her dreams
with a difference. The breath of human passion had stained the pure
crystal of her childish imagination; she peopled all her
air-castles, and sounds of wailing farewells floated from the White
North of her fancy after the procession of the evergreen trees in
the west yard, and the cherry-trees on the east had found out that
they were not in the Garden of Eden. In those days Ellen grew taller
and thinner, and the cherubic rou