e enough in
the Carrolls' time, but it wasn't as grand as this. And that reminds
me, I have something to tell you, but I don't want you to get as
excited as you did the last time I mentioned her name. You remember
the last day I was to see you we were talking of Lou Carroll? Well,
next day I was downtown in a store, and who should sail in but Mrs.
Joel Kent, from Oriental. You know Mrs. Joel--Sarah Chapple that was?
She and her man keep a little hotel up at Oriental. They're not very
well off. She is a cousin of old Mrs. Carroll, but, lawful heart, the
Carrolls didn't used to make much of the relationship! Well, Mrs. Joel
and I had a chat. She told me all her troubles--she always has lots of
them. Sarah was always of a grumbling turn, and she had a brand-new
stock of them this time. What do you think, Anna March? Lou
Carroll--or Mrs. Baxter, I suppose I should say--is up there at Joel
Kent's at Oriental, dying of consumption; leastwise, Mrs. Joel says
she is."

"Lou Carroll dying at Oriental!" cried Mrs. March.

"Yes. She came there from goodness knows where, about a month
ago--might as well have dropped from the clouds, Mrs. Joel says, for
all she expected of it. Her husband is dead, and I guess he led her a
life of it when he was alive, and she's as poor as second skimmings.
She was aiming to come here, Mrs. Joel says, but when she got to
Oriental she wasn't fit to stir a step further, and the Kents had to
keep her. I gather from what Mrs. Joel said that she's rather touched
in her mind too, and has an awful hankering to get home here--to this
very house. She appears to have the idea that it is hers, and all
just the same as it used to be. I guess she is a sight of trouble, and
Mrs. Joel ain't the woman to like that. But there! She has to work
most awful hard, and I suppose a sick person doesn't come handy in a
hotel. I guess you've got your revenge, Anna, without lifting a finger
to get it. Think of Lou Carroll coming to that!"

The next day was cold and raw. The ragged, bare trees in the old
Carroll grounds shook and writhed in the gusts of wind. Now and then a
drifting scud of rain dashed across the windows. Mrs. March looked out
with a shiver, and turned thankfully to her own cosy fireside again.

Presently she thought she heard a low knock at the front door, and
went to see. As she opened it a savage swirl of damp wind rushed in,
and the shrinking figure leaning against one of the fluted columns of
the Greci