her own picture in an attitude of utter astonishment.

"Where did they get that picture of me?" she demanded. "I never had a
picture painted."

For a few moments there was no reply. Those she addressed were engrossed
in comparing the portrait with its original. The resemblance was striking
enough, but it was no wonder that after once seeing the living Ida, Paul
had found the canvas stiff and hard and lifeless.

"No," said Miss Ludington, "you never had a picture painted. It was not
till many years after you had left the world that this picture was
painted. It was enlarged from this portrait of you. Do you remember it?"
and taking the locket containing the ivory portrait of Ida from her neck
where she had worn it so many years, she opened and gave it to the girl.

"Why, it is my ivory portrait!" exclaimed Ida. "How did you come by it?
What do you mean about my leaving the world? Something strange has
happened to me, I know, but did I die? I don't remember dying. Oh, can't
somebody explain what has happened to me?"

The dazed look which had disappeared from her face since her recognition
of the village and the homestead had come back, and her last words were a
bitter cry that went to the hearts of the listeners.

Now, all the time they had been in the carriage, Paul had been trying to
think of some mode of setting her relationship to Miss Ludington in a
light so clear that she must comprehend it, for it was evident that the
confused explanations at Mrs. Legrand's had availed little, if anything,
to that end. Unless this could be done she seemed likely to remain
indefinitely in this dazed mental state, which must be so exquisitely
painful to her, and was scarcely less so to them.

"If you will listen to me patiently," he said, "I will try to explain.
You know that some strange thing has happened to you, and you must expect
to find the explanation as strange as the thing itself; but it is not
hard to understand."

Ida's eyes were fixed on him with the expression of one listening for her
life.

"Do you remember being a little girl of nine or ten years old?" he asked.

"Oh, yes!" she answered. "I remember that perfectly well."

"You are now a young woman," he went on. "Where is that little girl whom
you remember? What has become of her?"

"Why, I don't know," replied Ida. "I suppose she is somewhere in me."

"But you don't look like a little girl, or think or act or feel like one.
How can she be in you?"

"Whe