nd generally on the measure of time. The imitation of Mrs.
Tretherick's manner was exceedingly successful, and the conversation
almost a literal reproduction, with a single exception. After she had
informed the doll that she was not her mother, at the close of the
interview she added pathetically, "that if she was dood, very dood, she
might be her mamma, and love her very much."

I have already hinted that Mrs. Tretherick was deficient in a sense of
humor. Perhaps it was for this reason that this whole scene affected
her most unpleasantly; and the conclusion sent the blood tingling to her
cheek. There was something, too, inconceivably lonely in the situation.
The unfurnished vacant room, the half-lights, the monstrous doll, whose
very size seemed to give a pathetic significance to its speechlessness,
the smallness of the one animate, self-centered figure--all these
touched more or less deeply the half-poetic sensibilities of the woman.
She could not help utilizing the impression as she stood there, and
thought what a fine poem might be constructed from this material if the
room were a little darker, the child lonelier--say, sitting beside a
dead mother's bier, and the wind wailing in the turrets. And then she
suddenly heard footsteps at the door below, and recognized the tread of
the colonel's cane.

She flew swiftly down the stairs, and encountered the colonel in the
hall. Here she poured into his astonished ear a voluble and exaggerated
statement of her discovery, and indignant recital of her wrongs. "Don't
tell me the whole thing wasn't arranged beforehand; for I know it was!"
she almost screamed. "And think," she added, "of the heartlessness of
the wretch, leaving his own child alone here in that way."

"It's a blank shame!" stammered the colonel, without the least idea
of what he was talking about. In fact, utterly unable as he was to
comprehend a reason for the woman's excitement, with his estimate of
her character, I fear he showed it more plainly than he intended. He
stammered, expanded his chest, looked stern, gallant, tender, but
all unintelligently. Mrs. Tretherick, for an instant, experienced a
sickening doubt of the existence of natures in perfect affinity.

"It's of no use," said Mrs. Tretherick with sudden vehemence, in answer
to some inaudible remark of the colonel's, and withdrawing her hand from
the fervent grasp of that ardent and sympathetic man. "It's of no use:
my mind is made up. You can send f