front of the open fire,
playing with a white angora kitten, who climbed upon her shoulder and
generally conducted himself like a white ball of animated yarn. It was
too bad that there was no painter at hand to transfer to canvas so
lovely a picture as this girl in her white frock made, sitting by the
firelight in this mellow old room, playing with a white imp of a
kitten. It would have made an ideal study in white and scarlet.

How comfortable it all was; the book-lined walls, the repose and
dignity of this beautiful home, with its corps of well-trained servants
waiting to minister to one's lightest wants. The secure and sheltered
feeling that it gave appealed strongly to the girl, who but a little
while ago had enjoyed similar surroundings in her father's house.

And then, there had been that awful day when her father's wealth had
vanished into air like a burst bubble, and he had come home with a
white drawn face and gone to bed, never again to rise from it.

Anna did not mind the privations that followed on her own account, but
they were pitifully hard on her invalid mother, who had been used to
every comfort all her life.

After they had left New York, they had taken a little cottage in
Waltham, Mass., and it was here that Mrs. Standish Tremont had come to
call on her relatives in their grief and do what she could toward
lightening their burdens. Anna was worn out with the constant care of
her mother, and would only consent to go away for a rest, because the
doctor told her that her health was surely breaking under the strain,
and that if she did not go, there would be two invalids instead of one.

It was at Mrs. Tremont's that she had met Lennox Sanderson, and from
the first, both seemed to be under the influence of some subtle spell
that drew them together blindly, and without the consent of their
wills. Mrs. Tremont, who viewed the growing attraction of these two
young people with well-concealed alarm, watched every opportunity to
prevent their enjoying each other's society. It irritated her that one
of the wealthiest and most influential men in Harvard should take such
a fancy to her penniless young relative, instead of to Grace Tremont,
whom she had selected for his wife.

There were few things that Mrs. Tremont enjoyed so much as arranging
romances in everyday life.

"Pardon me, Miss Moore," said the butler, standing at her elbow, "but
there has been a telephone message from Mrs. Tremont, saying t