the old man had no suspicion of her
identity.

"Yes, I do," she answered boldly.

"What makes a darling of him?" the old gentleman inquired.

Di felt that this was her opportunity, and that she was letting it
slip. But she could not help herself, and she only answered rather
lamely:

"Oh, nothing, except that he is _such a good grandfather!_" Upon which
she beat a hasty retreat, and fled to the protection of Miss Downs,
whom she found in an adjoining room.

It was perhaps twenty minutes later that Di and her teacher passed the
picture again, and, behold, there was the old gentleman standing, lost
in thought, exactly on the spot where she had left him. He did not
seem to be looking at the picture, but Di felt certain that he was
thinking of it. And, suddenly, it passed through her mind like a flash
that he was sorry.

"Yes; he's sorry," she said to herself. "He's sorry, and he doesn't
know how to say so!"

The more she thought of it in the days that followed,--and she seemed
to be thinking pretty much all the time of the old man and the look on
his face as he stood before the picture,--the more convinced she
became that he was sorry and did not know how to say so.

"And he ought not to have to say so," she told herself. "He's an old,
old man, and he ought not to have to say that he is sorry."

The old, old man--aged sixty-five--might have taken exception to that
part of her proposition touching his extreme antiquity, but we may be
pretty sure that he would have cordially endorsed her opinion that the
dignity of his years forbade his saying that he was sorry.

In those days Di used to walk often past her grandfather's house. It
was a very big house for a single occupant. Even the stout footman,
whom she had once seen at the door, did not seem stout enough, nor
numerous enough to relieve the big house of its vacancy. There were
heavy woollen draperies in the parlor windows, but not a hint of the
pretty white muslin which a woman would have had up in no time. Once
she passed the house just at dusk, after the lights were lighted.
Through the long windows she looked into the empty room. Not so much
as a cat or a dog was awaiting the master. In the swift glance with
which she swept the interior she noted that the fireplace was boarded
in. That seemed to Di indescribably dreary. Perhaps her grandfather
did not sit here; perhaps he had a library somewhere, like their own.
But, no; there was the portly footman enteri