in. What
she had forgotten surprised Sylvia as much as it touched her. Aunt
Victoria came rapidly to the side of the carriage and put out her
arms. "Come here, dear," she said in a voice Sylvia had never
heard her use. It trembled a little, and broke. With her quick
responsiveness, Sylvia sprang into the outstretched arms, overcome by
the other's emotion. She hid her face against the soft, perfumed laces
and silk, and heard from beneath them the painful throb of a quickly
beating heart.

Mrs. Marshall-Smith held her niece for a long moment and then turned
the quivering little face up to her own grave eyes, in which Sylvia,
for all her inexperience, read a real suffering. Aunt Victoria looked
as though somebody were hurting her--hurting her awfully--Sylvia
pressed her cheek hard against her aunt's, and Mrs. Marshall-Smith
felt, soft and Warm and ardent on her lips, the indescribably fresh
kiss of a child's mouth. "Oh, little Sylvia!" she cried, in that
new, strange, uncertain voice which trembled and broke, "Oh, little
Sylvia!" She seemed to be about to say something more, said in fact in
a half-whisper,

"I hope--I hope--" but then shook her head, kissed Sylvia gently, put
her back in the carriage, and again disappeared through the revolving
door.

This time she did not turn back. She did not even look back. After a
moment's wait, Peter gathered up the reins and Sylvia, vaguely uneasy,
and much moved, drove home in a solitary state, which she forgot to
enjoy.

The next morning there was no arrival, even tardy, of the visitors
from the hotel. Instead came a letter, breaking the startling news
that Aunt Victoria had been called unexpectedly to the East, and had
left on the midnight train, taking Arnold with her, of course. Judith
burst into angry expressions of wrath over the incompleteness of the
cave which she and Arnold had been excavating together. The next day
was the beginning of school, she reminded her auditors, and she'd have
no time to get it done! Never! She characterized Aunt Victoria as a
mean old thing, an epithet for which she was not reproved, her mother
sitting quite absent and absorbed in the letter. She read it over
twice, with a very puzzled air, which gave an odd look to her usually
crystal-clear countenance. She asked her husband one question as he
went out of the door. "You didn't see Victoria yesterday--or say
anything to her?" to which he answered, with apparently uncalled-for
heat, "I did