obsession having passed. "You and darling little Patricia have become a
real part of my life, and my one prayer has been that I could do as much
for you. Your father restored my lost faith in men almost the first time
I met him in my lawyer's office in Denver."

"Yes." Alice accepted the tribute to her father as a matter of fact. "He
nearly killed himself in Pittsburgh before he gave up his business
there, and he went out West two or three times to get back his health.
And the last time he brought you back, too. I have always loved the West
for that."

Mrs. Gorham smiled as she continued: "I learned of his work from others
and from himself, and rejoiced to find a man with real ideals, in
business and in his every-day life, actually lived up to. I had no
notion of what that first chance meeting would lead to, of the home that
it would give me among my girlhood friends, filled with the love and
sympathy which my heart had always craved. Now you know the whole story,
Alice dear--now you know why the tears come sometimes to my eyes as I
press to my heart that quaint, precious little sister of yours, so near
the age Carina would have been, who softens the memory of the sweet dead
face by giving to it a living reality."

"I understand," the girl cried, throwing her arms about Eleanor's neck
and embracing her warmly. "I can't say the right thing now I am so
unstrung, but I love you even more than ever because you've let me
share it with you."

So they separated for the night--the woman's heart bleeding from the
reopening of the former wound, yet happier that her accepted confidante
had become acquainted with that part of her life which was consecrated