eyes bluer and more wistful than formerly, Billy Duncan came
forward to speak to Tory.

He seemed older and thinner and less the cherub she remembered.

The children who were his playmates could have told her that Billy had
altered since the departure of his adored companion, Lucy Martin, the
little girl who had been adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Jeremy Hammond a few
months before.

Lucy Martin had been an odd little girl, full of fire and passion and
wilfulness. Blindly and adoringly Billy had followed her until her
departure from the Gray House.

Afterwards he never spoke of her or asked for her, although at first
she often demanded his presence and came to the Gray House to see him.
Of late, however, Lucy had ceased to appear.

"Do you miss Lucy?" Tory inquired at this instant and was sorry for
her own stupidity.

Billy merely shook his head. He always had been a dull little boy. One
had been fond of him because of his sweetness and placidity, not for
any brilliance.

Slipping a gift inside Billy's pockets, Tory ran on up to the Gray
House, comforting herself with the idea that the little boy was
incapable of feeling anything deeply.

The fact that Lucy had lost her affection for Kara, who had been like
a devoted older sister, was more serious.

The door stood open so that Tory entered the wide hall of the old
house without ringing the bell. She had come often enough during the
past winter and spring to be a privileged character.

At the bottom of the long flight of stairs she paused a moment. Warm
and out of breath, she did not wish Kara to guess at her rebellious
mood when she arrived at the little room up under the eaves.

"You won't find Kara upstairs in her old room. Let me show you where
she is," a voice called, as Tory placed her foot on the first stair.

The big room had been a back parlor in the days when the Gray House
had been the residence of a prosperous farmer. This was before the
village of Westhaven had drawn so close to it.

By the window in a wheeled chair sat a small figure crouched so low
that had she not known it could be no one else, Tory would scarcely
have recognized her.

Since her night and Kara's together on the hillside only a week had
gone by. Could one week have altered Kara's appearance and her nature?

Her impulse to go toward the figure and gather her in her arms, Tory
carefully repressed.

Kara's expression, as she raised her eyes at her approach, was almost
forbidding