black, lustrous hair. Just beneath the picture, on the top shelf
of the bookcase, was a vaseful of flowers. Another vaseful stood
on the table beside the basket.

All this was astonishing enough. But what puzzled Mrs. Griggs
completely was the fact that a woman's dress was hanging over a
chair before the mirror--a pale blue, silken affair. And on the
floor beside it were two little blue satin slippers!

Good Mrs. Griggs did not leave the room until she had thoroughly
explored it, even to shaking out the blue dress and discovering it
to be a tea-gown--wrapper, she called it. But she found nothing
to throw any light on the mystery. The fact that the simple name
"Alice" was written on the fly-leaves of all the books only
deepened it, for it was a name unknown in the Dale family. In
this puzzled state she was obliged to depart, nor did she ever
find the door unlocked again; and, discovering that people thought
she was romancing when she talked about the mysterious west gable
at Golden Milestone, she indignantly held her peace concerning the
whole affair.

But Mrs. Griggs had told no more than the simple truth. Jasper
Dale, under all his shyness and aloofness, possessed a nature full
of delicate romance and poesy, which, denied expression in the
common ways of life, bloomed out in the realm of fancy and
imagination. Left alone, just when the boy's nature was deepening
into the man's, he turned to this ideal kingdom for all he
believed the real world could never give him. Love--a strange,
almost mystical love--played its part here for him. He shadowed
forth to himself the vision of a woman, loving and beloved; he