re away,
and Mr. Lawrence has gone West on business. Will
you not, out of the generosity of your heart, come
and cheer me up a bit? I was in bed all day
yesterday with a frightful headache, and can just
crawl to-day. Do not disappoint me. I have set my
heart on hearing you read, and have some nice new
books.

Ever your obliged friend, A. L.

"You must go," was her aunt's comment in a sympathizing tone. "I have
promised all the afternoon to the School Club, you know, and you would
only be home alone. Poor Mrs. Lawrence! What an invalid she has become!
And think of me,"--with a cheery laugh,--"able to get about anywhere!"

So Sylvie went up to Hope Terrace in the luxurious carriage she thought
she had tabooed forever.

Mrs. Lawrence did look very poorly. She kept to her room a great deal
nowadays; or rather there were two of them,--one off the bedchamber,
with a pretty oriel window, and exquisitely fitted up with every luxury
wealth and taste could devise.

Mrs. Lawrence had already lost her interest in life. Her two daughters
were well married. Irene would be, of course; but marriages were an old
story for her. She had loved to shine at watering-places, but the gayety
no longer lured her. She had dazzled in diamonds, silks, and velvets,
been admired on the right hand and on the left, until it was an old,
trite story. Servants managed her house admirably. Mr. Lawrence never
wearied her with any business details. Her clothes were ordered, and
made, and hung in the closets. The carriage was always at hand. Not a
want of any kind, hardly a desire, that could not be instantly
satisfied. She had sunk into a kind of graceful semi-invalidism, and
enjoyed the coming and going of her children, but her own time was over.

"How good you are, Sylvie dear!" and, drawing the young girl to her, she
kissed her fondly. "I don't know what I should do without you. Irene
would stay at home if I wanted her; but she is so full of life and
excitement, that it wears me out. You are not always in such a whirl of
society, and then you _are_ different. You have such a sweet,
sympathetic nature, child! I can always feel it in your hand, and your
voice is so soothing. What a difference there is in voices!"

Her own was finely modulated: indeed, Sylvie used to think sometimes
that these Lawrences had more than their share of the good things of
th