about the troublesome little girl. I have heard ladies say they would
not marry a man who had a child."

"But Miss Rose loves me, papa; I am sure she does," she said,
flushing, and the tears starting to her eyes.

"Yes, darling, I know she does," he answered soothingly. "I am only
afraid she loves you better than she does me."

A large party of equestrians were setting out from the hotel that
evening soon after tea, and Elsie, in company with several other
little girls, went out upon the veranda to watch them mount and ride
away. She was absent but a few moments from the parlor, where she had
left her father, but when she returned to it he was not there. Miss
Rose, too, was gone, she found upon further search, and though she had
not much difficulty in conjecturing why she had thus, for the first
time, been left behind, she could not help feeling rather lonely and
desolate.

She felt no disposition to renew the afternoon's conversation with
Annie Hart, so she went quietly upstairs to their private parlor and
sat down to amuse herself with a book until Chloe came in from eating
her supper. Then the little girl brought a stool, and seating herself
in the old posture with her head in her nurse's lap, she drew her
mother's miniature from her bosom, and fixing her eyes lovingly upon
it, said, as she had done hundreds of times before: "Now, mammy,
please tell me about my dear, dear mamma."

The soft eyes were full of tears; for with all her joy at the thought
of Rose, mingled a strange sad feeling that she was getting farther