"I am so glad, dear Beth, my daughter. I shall have another daughter in
place of the one I am giving away."

She drew the girl to her breast with tender affection. Beth had been
motherless all her life, and the caress was sweet and soothing to her.
Edith fastened her cape and kissed her fondly when she was going home.
Clarence went with her, and somehow everything was so dream-like and
unreal that even the old rough-cast home looked strange and shadowy in
the moon-light. It was perhaps a relief that her father had not yet
returned.

She was smiling and happy, but even her own little room seemed strangely
unnatural that night. She stopped just inside the door and looked at it,
the moonlight streaming through the open window upon her bed. Was she
really the same Beth Woodburn that had rested there last night and
thought about the roses. She took them out of her belt now. A sweetly
solemn feeling stole over her, and she crossed over and knelt at the
window, the withered roses in her hand, her face upturned to heaven.
Sacred thoughts filled her mind. She had longed for love, someone to
love, someone who loved her; but was she worthy, she asked herself, pure
enough, good enough? She felt to-night that she was kneeling at an
unseen shrine, a bride, to be decked by the holy angels in robes whiter
than mortal ever saw.

Waves of sweet music aroused her. She started up as from a dream,
recognizing at once the touch of the same hand that she had heard in the
distance the night before, and it was coming from their own parlor
window, right beneath hers! She held her breath almost as she stole out
and leaned over the balustrade to peer into the parlor. Why, it was