ong ago, and that her father was the last of his name in America, and
when he died, after a wasting illness that exhausted his fortune, there
was little thought given to the fact that the old Huguenot root still
existed in France, though half-playful, half-serious mention had now and
then been made of the kinsfolk in France they would sometime go to seek.

All this Esther had stored away in her memory, so that when Monsieur
Baudouin announced himself as the kinsman from France, it was more like
a long-anticipated event than a surprise. And all this she told to Laura
in the days that followed,--those dear, delightful days, when there was
no difficulty put in the way of going to McVane Street; when McVane
Street, indeed, according to Kitty, became quite the fashion with the
artists flocking to see the wonderful etching, and Monsieur Baudouin
holding forth upon its merits to them as he made himself at home with
his American kinsfolk, who were now discovered to be such charming folk.
Laura sometimes in these days blazed up with indignation and disgust as
she noted the sudden attentions that were bestowed upon Esther and her
mother. No one now spoke of emigrants and foreigners in connection with
these dwellers on McVane Street. Jack Brooks himself seemed to forget
that David Wybern looked like a Jew, even before it was found that David
and all of his people were of the most unmixed Puritan stock!

"And I, too," thought Laura,--"I, too, muddled and mistook things as I
shouldn't, if Esther and her mother had lived in a different quarter. If
they had lived anywhere over the hill, should I have fancied, though
they _were_ so poor, that Mrs. Bowdoin must have been a professional
model? No, no, I should have thought at once, what I _know_ now, that
the artist was her friend, and that she sat to him as a friendly favor,
like any other lady."

But while Laura thus scourged herself with the rest, Esther and her
mother had set her apart from all the rest for their special love and
confidence,--a love and confidence that are as fresh to-day as when the
mother and daughter sailed away with Monsieur Baudouin, a year ago, to
visit their French kinsfolk.

BECKY.

CHAPTER I.

"Number five!" called out shrilly and impatiently the saleswoman at the
lace counter in a great dry-goods establishment. The call was repeated
in a still more impatient tone before there was any response; then there
rushed up a girl of ten or el