ieved in me."

Mrs. Wentworth glanced at her with interest.

"Where is he staying?"

"I do not know. I saw him through a shop-window."

"What! Did you not speak to him?"

"I did not get a chance. When I came out of the shop he was gone."

"That was sad. It would have been quite romantic, would it not? But,
perhaps, after all, he did not make his fortune?" Mrs. Wentworth looked
complacent.

"He did if he set his mind to it," declared Mrs. Lancaster.

"How about Ferdy Wickersham?" The least little light of malevolence
crept into Mrs. Wentworth's eyes.

Mrs. Lancaster gave a shrug of impatience, and pushed a photograph on a
small table farther away, as if it incommoded her.

"Oh, Ferdy Wickersham! Ferdy Wickersham to that man is a heated room to
the breath of hills and forests." She spoke with real warmth, and Mrs.
Wentworth gazed at her curiously for a few seconds.

"Still, I rather fancy for a constancy you'd prefer the heated rooms to
the coldness of the hills. Your gowns would not look so well in
the forest."

It was a moment before Mrs. Lancaster's face relaxed.

"I suppose I should," she said slowly, with something very like a sigh.
"He was the only man I ever knew who made me do what I did not want to
do and made me wish to be something better than I was," she
added absently.

Mrs. Wentworth glanced at her somewhat impatiently, but she went on:

"I was very romantic then; and you should have heard him read the
'Idylls of the King.' He had the most beautiful voice. He made you live
in Arthur's court, because he lived there himself."

Mrs. Wentworth burst into laughter, but it was not very merry.

"My dear Alice, you must have been romantic. How old were you, did you
say?"

"It was three years before I was married," said Mrs. Lancaster, firmly.

Her friend gazed at her with a puzzled expression on her face.

"Oh! Now, my dear Alice, don't let's have any more of this
sentimentalizing. I never indulge in it; it always gives me a headache.
One might think you were a school-girl."

At the word a wood in all the bravery of Spring sprang into Alice's
mind. A young girl was seated on the mossy ground, and outstretched at
her feet was a young man, fresh-faced and clear-eyed, quoting a poem of
youth and of love.

"Heaven knows I wish I were," said Mrs. Lancaster, soberly. "I might
then be something different from what I am!"

"Oh, nonsense! You do nothing of the kind. Here are you, a rich woman,
y