ght and perfect silence, it had a new,
uninhabited look, as if the carpenters and painters had just left it. At
the farther end of the lot, a Chinaman was stolidly digging; but there
was no other sign of occupancy. "The coast," as the colonel had said,
was indeed "clear." Mrs. Tretherick paused at the gate. The colonel
would have entered with her, but was stopped by a gesture. "Come for me
in a couple of hours, and I shall have everything packed," she said,
as she smiled, and extended her hand. The colonel seized and pressed it
with great fervor. Perhaps the pressure was slightly returned; for the
gallant colonel was impelled to inflate his chest, and trip away as
smartly as his stubby-toed, high-heeled boots would permit. When he had
gone, Mrs. Tretherick opened the door, listened a moment in the deserted
hall, and then ran quickly upstairs to what had been her bedroom.

Everything there was unchanged as on the night she left it. On the
dressing-table stood her bandbox, as she remembered to have left it
when she took out her bonnet. On the mantle lay the other glove she
had forgotten in her flight. The two lower drawers of the bureau were
half-open (she had forgotten to shut them); and on its marble top lay
her shawl pin and a soiled cuff. What other recollections came upon her
I know not; but she suddenly grew quite white, shivered, and listened
with a beating heart, and her hand upon the door. Then she stepped to
the mirror, and half-fearfully, half-curiously, parted with her fingers
the braids of her blond hair above her little pink ear, until she came
upon an ugly, half-healed scar. She gazed at this, moving her pretty
head up and down to get a better light upon it, until the slight cast
in her velvety eyes became very strongly marked indeed. Then she turned
away with a light, reckless, foolish laugh, and ran to the closet where
hung her precious dresses. These she inspected nervously, and missing
suddenly a favorite black silk from its accustomed peg, for a moment,
thought she should have fainted. But discovering it the next instant
lying upon a trunk where she had thrown it, a feeling of thankfulness
to a superior Being who protects the friendless for the first time
sincerely thrilled her. Then, albeit she was hurried for time, she could
not resist trying the effect of a certain lavender neck ribbon upon the
dress she was then wearing, before the mirror. And then suddenly she
became aware of a child's voice close