e first thing that he had been able to obtain.

He felt Mary Lee's lack of advantages more than she did. With the
exception of a few excursions into the country, she had lived all her
seventeen years in this dingy little house on a side street. Her
mother had been her only teacher, and the men and women found in the
books of her father's library her only companions. Mary Lee was a
sociable creature; she longed for the companionship of girls of her
own age. To be a debutante, to have the seasons filled with a round of
visiting and receiving, to meet brilliant people, and to number one's
friends by the score--this to her simple little heart seemed the
height of happiness.

Now for the first time in her life she was to have a taste of it. Miss
Travis Dent had invited her to spend a month with her at Wicklett
Springs, a fashionable summer resort, in a house full of interesting
people, whose sayings and doings were already familiar to her through
the society columns of the daily papers. She was to be Travis's guest.
The rest of it, the railroad expenses, the new trunk and the new
clothes which footed up to such an enormous sum in her eyes, were of
her father's giving, and she promised herself a happiness in
proportion to the sacrifice he had made to provide for her.

"Hurry, Mary Lee!" called her mother, again. At the second call there
was a light rustle through the hall, and the bright face looking in at
the door seemed to transform all its surroundings.

"I couldn't come any sooner, mother dear, for admiring myself in my
new travelling-clothes. Oh, I'm such a fine peacock in all my fine
feathers!" she said, pausing to give her father a quick hug before she
took her place at the table. "Do tell me that I look like a real
born-to-the-purple, tailor-made girl."

Her father looked at her critically from the crown of her simple
travelling-hat to the tips of her little shoes, and there was an
unmistakable gleam of pride in his eyes as he completed his survey.
"Yes, you do," he said, slowly. "You would pass muster anywhere. I
don't mean your clothes alone; but it is written all over you, so
plainly that even a stranger must see at a glance, 'This is a real
little lady!'"

A little later they were bidding each other good-bye on a parlour car
in the Union Depot. Travis Dent had joined them.

"I could not send my little girl in better company," thought Mr.
Marker, as he shook hands with the serene young woman who came forwar