tter! I shall find it all out for myself," Eloise continued, as
she turned again to her mother, who was examining the red cloak as if
she wondered how it came there.

The mention of "finding it out" affected the Colonel more than anything
else had done. Amy had said the same thing to him once. She had not
found it out, but this slip of a girl would, he was sure, and with
something like a groan he sank back in his chair with a call for Peter.

"Take them away," he said huskily. "I can't bear any more,
and,--and,--the girl must stay, if Amy wants her, and bring me a
hot-water bag,--two of them,--I was never so cold in my life."

Peter nodded that he understood, and, ringing the bell for Amy's maid,
bade her take her mistress to her room, and the young lady, too. "She is
Mrs. Amy's daughter," he added.

There was no need to tell this, for Mrs. Biggs had done her duty, and
every servant in the house had heard the news and was anxious to see the
stranger. Amy was always at her best in her own room, where Sarah left
her alone with Eloise, and hastened away to gossip with Mrs. Biggs and
Peter. The shock, instead of making Amy worse, had for the time being
cleared her brain to some extent, so that she was able to talk quite
rationally to Eloise, whose first question was why she had thought her
dead. "I was so homesick for you, and cried so much after you went away
that he was angry and hard with me,--very hard,--and I said at last if
he didn't send for you I'd never sing again, and meant it, too," Amy
replied. "It was at Los Angeles on a concert night. I must have been
pretty bad, and he seemed half afraid of me, and finally told me you
were dead, and had been for three weeks, and that he had meant to keep
it from me till the season was over. I believed him, and something
snapped in my head and let in a pain and noise which have never left it;
but they will now I have found you. I went before the footlights once
that night, and the stage was full of coffins in which you lay, and I
saw the little grave in the New England cemetery where he said you were
buried. At last I fainted, and have never sung again. They were very
kind to me at Dr. Haynes's, where he came often to see me till I heard
he was dead. I was not sorry; he had been so,--so--I can't explain."

"I know," Eloise said, remembering her father's manner toward this weak,
timid woman, who went on: "Then Col. Crompton came and brought me home.
I used to live here year