to--to come to see you?" she asked.

"Why, certainly; what a question!" returned Mrs. Pendergast, in a
properly shocked tone of voice. "As if I could do otherwise than to want
my husband's sister to come to us."

Jane smiled faintly, but her eyes were troubled.

"Thank you; I'm glad you feel--that way. You see, at Fred's--I wouldn't
have them know it for the world, they were so good to me--but I
thought, lately, that maybe they didn't want--But it wasn't so, of
course. It couldn't have been. I--I ought not even to think it."

"Hm-m; no," returned Mrs. Pendergast, with noncommittal briefness.

Not six weeks later Mary, in her beautiful Commonwealth Avenue home,
received a call from a little, thin-faced woman, who curtsied to the
butler and asked him to please tell her sister that she wished to speak
to her.

Mary looked worried and not over-cordial when she rustled into the room.

"Why, Jane, did you find your way here all alone?" she cried.

"Yes--no--well, I asked a man at the last; but, you know, I've been here
twice before with the others."

"Yes, I know," said Mary.

There was a pause; then Jane cleared her throat timidly.