the stately, beautiful girl, with jewelled flowers in her
hair, her costly robe trailing the carpetless floor, the perfume of her
dress and golden hair scenting the room, and the wan little creature, so
wasted and pale, lying asleep on the low bed. Her hands grasped the
bed-clothes in her slumber, and with every rise and fall of her breast,
rose and fell a little locket worn round her neck by a black cord.
Kate's fingers touched it lightly.

"Poor soul!" she said; "poor little Agnes! Are you going to stay with
her until morning, Grace?"

"Yes, Miss Danton."

"I could not go to my room without seeing her; but now, there is no
necessity to linger. Good-morning."

Miss Danton left the room. Grace sat down again, and looked at the
locket curiously.

"I should like to open that and see whose picture it contains, and
yet--"

She looked a little ashamed, and drew back the hand that touched it. But
curiosity--woman's intensest passion--was not to be resisted.

"What harm can it be?" she thought. "She will never know."

She lifted the locket, lightly touched the spring, and it flew open. It
contained more than a picture, although there was a picture of a
handsome, boyish face that somehow had to Grace a familiar look. A slip
of folded paper, a plain gold ring, and a tress of brown, curly hair
dropped out. Grace opened the little slip of paper, and read it with an
utterly confounded face. It was partly written and partly printed, and
was the marriage certificate of Agnes Grant and Henry Darling. It bore
date New York, two years before.

Grace dropped the paper astounded. Miss Agnes Darling was a married
woman, then, and, childish as she looked, had been so for two years.
What were her reasons for denying it, and where was Henry Darling--dead
or deserted?

She look at the pictured face again. Very good-looking, but very
youthful and irresolute. Whom had she ever seen that looked like that?
Some one, surely, for it was as familiar as her own in the glass; but
who, or where, or when, was all densest mystery.

There was an uneasy movement of the sleeper. Grace, feeling guilty, put
back hastily the tress of hair--his, no doubt--the ring--a wedding-ring,
of course--and the marriage certificate. She closed the locket, and laid
it back on the fluttering heart. Poor little pale Agnes! that great
trouble of woman's life, loving and losing, had come to her then
already.

In the cold, gray dawn of the early morning, Grace re