wn, and how much I should
miss being with Kate and my other friends. My mind was still disquieted
when I went down to breakfast; but beside my plate I found, with a
hoped-for letter from my father, a note from Kate. To this day I have
never known any explanation of that depression of my spirits, and I hope
that the good luck which followed will help some reader to lose fear,
and to smile at such shadows if any chance to come.

Kate had evidently written to me in an excited state of mind, for her
note was not so trig-looking as usual; but this is what she said:--

Dear Helen,--I have a plan--I think it a most delightful plan--in
which you and I are chief characters. Promise that you will say
yes; if you do not you will have to remember all your life that you
broke a girl's heart. Come round early, and lunch with me and dine
with me. I'm to be all alone, and it's a long story and will need a
great deal of talking over.

K.

I showed this note to my aunt, and soon went round, very much
interested. My latch-key opened the Lancasters' door, and I hurried to
the parlor, where I heard my friend practising with great diligence. I
went up to her, and she turned her head and kissed me solemnly. You need
not smile; we are not sentimental girls, and are both much averse to
indiscriminate kissing, though I have not the adroit habit of shying in
which Kate is proficient. It would sometimes be impolite in any one
else, but she shies so affectionately.

"Won't you sit down, dear?" she said, with great ceremony, and went on
with her playing, which was abominable that morning; her fingers stepped
on each other, and, whatever the tune might have been in reality, it
certainly had a most remarkable incoherence as I heard it then. I took
up the new Littell and made believe read it, and finally threw it at
Kate; you would have thought we were two children.

"Have you heard that my grand-aunt, Miss Katharine Brandon of Deephaven,
is dead?" I knew that she had died in November, at least six months
before.

"Don't be nonsensical, Kate!" said I. "What is it you are going to tell
me?"

"My grand-aunt died very old, and was the last of her generation. She
had a sister and three brothers, one of whom had the honor of being my
grandfather. Mamma is sole heir to the family estates in Deephaven,
wharf-property and all, and it is a great inconvenience to her. The
house is a charming old house, and some of my