e, but the muffled grind through sand which
came from the roadways of Gracias.

"Hark!" said Penelope, lifting a forefinger. "Yes--there they are!"

Seizing a little head-covering of green wools, the product of her own
crochet-needle, she put it hastily on, and giving Middleton his hat and
stick, went with him down the path towards the gate. A carriage had
stopped, Dr. Kirby was helping some one to descend from the high,
old-fashioned vehicle; the young figure in black, the bright hair under
the veil, the overwhelming burst of sobs when she saw their familiar
faces--yes, this was Garda who had come back to them, come back home, as
they fondly called it; she had been widowed for more than a year, Lucian
had died in Venice nineteen months before.

They brought her in, tenderly Mrs. Moore took off the crape bonnet; the
girl cried bitterly, her head on Penelope's shoulder. There were tears
in the eyes of the two men also; it seemed so strange that this bowed
black figure should be their Garda, the beautiful, idle, young girl who
had had such a genius for happiness that she had been able to extract
full measure of it from even an old hammock and a crane.

Lucian had died suddenly of fever. Garda herself, prostrated by her
grief, for months afterwards had scarcely raised her head. Dr. Kirby had
started immediately, he had been with her through the worst of her
illness. But she had not been alone; her devoted friends in Venice were
two sisters and a brother, who, singularly enough, were cousins of
Rosalie, Lucian's first wife, and of the same name, Bogardus. These
staid, stout people had been fascinated with the Spensers from the
first.

And when came the overwhelming blow of Lucian's death, the two ladies,
Alicia and Gertrude, immediately took charge of the stricken young wife,
and did it with a tenderness which even Dr. Kirby pronounced touching,
when he himself arrived in Venice--as soon as was possible, but some
weeks later. When Garda at last began to improve a little, her lassitude
continued; it was evident that she would not be able to travel for some
time to come. Meanwhile the poor Doctor's money was running out. Garda
did not think of this; at present she thought only of her sorrow, and
then, as had always been said of Garda, she never remembered money at
all. Of course the Doctor would not confide to these strangers the
embarrassments of his position. And no Bogardus, left to himself, would
have been able to co