oks, and neither of them so much
as mentioned Hugo Tancred. But Jan felt a wild desire to get away by
herself and cry and cry over this sad wraith of the young sister whose
serene and happy beauty had been the family pride.

And yet she was so essentially the same Fay, tender and loving and
inconsequent, and full of pretty cares for Jan's comfort.

The dining-room was behind the sitting-room, with only a curtain
between, and as they sat at breakfast Fay was so eager Jan should
eat--she ate nothing herself--so anxious lest she should not like the
Indian food, that poor Jan, with a lump in her throat that choked her at
every morsel, forced down the carefully thought-out breakfast and meekly
accepted everything presented by the grey-haired turbaned butler who
bent over her paternally and offered every dish much as one would tempt
a shy child with some amusing toy.

Presently Fay took her to see her room, large, bare and airy, with
little furniture save the bed with its clean white mosquito curtains
placed under the electric fan in the centre of the ceiling. Outside the
window was a narrow balcony, and Jan went there at once to look out; and
though her heart was so heavy she was fain to exclaim joyfully at the
beauty of the view.

Right opposite, across Back Bay, lay the wooded villa-crowned slopes of
Malabar Hill, flung like a garland on the bosom of a sea deeply blue and
smiling, smooth as a lake, while below her lay the pageant of the
street, with its ever-changing panorama of vivid life. The whole so
brilliant, so various, so wholly unlike any beautiful place she had ever
seen before that, artist's daughter she was, she cried eagerly to Fay,
"Oh, come and look! Did you ever see anything so lovely? How Dad would
have rejoiced in this!"

Fay followed slowly: "I thought you'd like it," she said, evidently
pleased by Jan's enthusiasm, "that's why I gave you this room. Look,
Jan! There are the children coming, those two over by the band-stand.
They see us. _Do_ wave to them."

The children were still a long way off. Jan could only see an ayah in
her white draperies pushing a little go-cart with a child in it, and a
small boy trotting by her side, but she waved as she was bidden.

The room had evidently at one time been used as a nursery, for inside
the stone balustrade was a high trellis of wood. Jan and Fay were both
tall women, but even on them the guarding trellis came right up to their
shoulders. Neither of them