ons,
was near it. Above the bookcase a woman's picture hung--a water-colour,
if Mrs. Griggs had but known it--representing a pale, very sweet face,
with large, dark eyes and a wistful expression under loose masses of
black, lustrous hair. Just beneath the picture, on the top shelf of the
bookcase, was a vaseful of flowers. Another vaseful stood on the table
beside the basket.

All this was astonishing enough. But what puzzled Mrs. Griggs completely
was the fact that a woman's dress was hanging over a chair before the
mirror--a pale blue, silken affair. And on the floor beside it were two
little blue satin slippers!

Good Mrs. Griggs did not leave the room until she had thoroughly
explored it, even to shaking out the blue dress and discovering it to be
a tea-gown--wrapper, she called it. But she found nothing to throw any
light on the mystery. The fact that the simple name "Alice" was written
on the fly-leaves of all the books only deepened it, for it was a name
unknown in the Dale family. In this puzzled state she was obliged to
depart, nor did she ever find the door unlocked again; and, discovering
that people thought she was romancing when she talked about the
mysterious west gable at Golden Milestone, she indignantly held her
peace concerning the whole affair.

But Mrs. Griggs had told no more than the simple truth. Jasper Dale,
under all his shyness and aloofness, possessed a nature full of delicate
romance and poesy, which, denied expression in the common ways of life,
bloomed out in the realm of fancy and imagination. Left alone, just when
the boy's nature was deepening into the man's, he turned to this ideal
kingdom for all he believed the real world could never give him. Love--a
strange, almost mystical love--played its part here for him. He shadowed
forth to himself the vision of a woman, loving and beloved; he cherished
it until it became almost as real to him as his own personality and he
gave this dream woman the name he liked best--Alice. In fancy he walked
and talked with her, spoke words of love to her, and heard words of love
in return. When he came from work at the close of day she met him at his
threshold in the twilight--a strange, fair, starry shape, as elusive and
spiritual as a blossom reflected in a pool by moonlight--with welcome on
her lips and in her eyes.

One day, when he was in Charlottetown on business, he had been struck by
a picture in the window of a store. It was strangely like the