Morrison, sitting in the twilight lost in happy thoughts, was
aroused by Frances' excited voice: "Mother, what do you think has
happened?"

Surprised at sight of the stranger, she rose; her husband met her and
drew her forward: "Auntie, this is my wife, to whom I owe my greatest
happiness."

His aunt understood. This fair, girlish looking little person filled the
first place in his heart; whatever else was changed, this was not.

"You must try to love me for Jack's sake," she said, taking Katherine's
hand with that new gentleness her nephew found so touching.

It won his wife. "I shall not have to try," she answered.

"Are you willing to forget and begin again?--that is what we are going
to do, is it not, Jack?" his aunt looked from his wife to him. "It will
make a great difference in my life," she continued; "I have been very
lonely, and I want this little girl;" she put her arm around Frances.

"Then she will certainly have to take us, too; won't she, Katherine?"
and Mr. Morrison laughed happily.

Frances still seemed puzzled. "If this is my Aunt Frances--" she said
slowly, "who is the little girl? Is she the Girl in the Golden Doorway,
truly?--the portrait, I mean.

"I think she must be, and she is also your great-grandmother," her aunt
replied.

"Then who is a Certain Person. You said he was abroad, father." Frances
evidently thought it time all mysteries were solved.

"Why, yes, auntie, how does it happen you are not abroad? I heard last
summer on the best authority that you would spend the winter in Egypt,"
said her nephew.

"I fully expected to be gone eighteen months when I left, but the death
of the mother of my friend, Mrs. Roberts, changed our plans. I did not
wish to go alone."

Frances was listening intently. "Father! you don't mean Aunt Frances is
a Certain Person?" she cried. "I thought it was a man."

"It is a character we are going to forget. I am your father's aunt and
yours, dear, and I am not Mrs. Marvin, but Mrs. Richards. Mrs. Marvin is
my cousin. You understand it all now, don't you?"

Frances was not quite certain of this, but there was no doubt about her
pleasure in her new relative; and when her father went home with his
aunt she was rather impatient at not being allowed to go too.

"Come sit beside me, Wink, and have a little talk," Mrs. Morrison
suggested when they were alone.

Frances came and nestled down beside her mother; the day had been so
full of excitement she foun