be, it surely was, Miss Allison Clyde. He studied the
young pictured face more closely, and felt sure he traced a resemblance
in it to the old. To-morrow he would find out.

The pathos of it--too old for love, the theme of his song. Reverently he
gathered up the letters, replaced them in their envelope, and put them
away. Suddenly, sharply the consciousness smote him: the woman to whom
those letters were written had never read them.

III

The next afternoon at tea-time he took the daguerreotype to his Aunt
Lucretia. She received it with her slow, uncertain, frail old hands,
lifting it to the light.

"Why, that little old picture of Allison!" she said. "I had forgotten we
had it. Where did you find it? It was William's." She stared at it with
the pitiful look the eyes of the old show at reawakening memories. "I
always thought your Uncle William was in love with her," she confided,
"although he never told us so."

"Miss Allison Clyde?" Mark questioned, and Miss Lucretia nodded faintly,
marveling:

"Why, didn't you know!"

"And was Miss Allison in love with Uncle William?"

Miss Lucretia answered doubtfully:

"I don't know. She was a child. She never said so."

"Did she ever, later on, have a love-affair?"

His aunt shook her head.

"Not that I know of. She was always so taken up with her own household.
They were very close to each other, a very united family."

"It is a wonderful little face," Mark said, looking down at the
daguerreotype.

"She was only a child then," Lucretia repeated, "not more than fifteen."
Her eyes became reminiscent. "She was still so young, only seventeen,
when he died. When he came home, he knew he had not long to live. He
used to sit out here and watch her as she moved about. He never talked
much, but the look in his eyes was," Aunt Lucretia stated in her quiet
way, "very moving."

Mark heard a step, and glanced up to see Miss Allison Clyde herself
standing beside them, looking down at them with a smile.

"To whom am I indebted for this honor? That funny little old ambrotype!
Where did you unearth it, Lucretia?"

"It was Brother William's," Lucretia explained, with her gentle
melancholy. "Mark found it in his room and asked me about it."

Mark looked to see some revelation in Miss Allison Clyde's face, but
found none. Her kindly smile had not faded or changed except to take
on a shade of amusement as she picked up the ambrotype.

"How proud I was of that mantilla!" she