st
passing the Hanbury mansion in Wayland Square, and her eyes fell upon
the playroom windows under the wide cornice; and she wondered whether
the doll's house were still in its place, its mute inhabitants waiting
to be called by the names she had given them, and quickened into life
once more.

Next she recalled the arrival at the little house that had been her
home, summer and winter, for so many years of her life. A red and white
awning, stretching up the length of the walk which once had run beside
the tall pear trees, gave it an unrecognizable, gala air. Long had
it stood there, patient, unpretentious, content that the great things
should pass it by! And now, modest still, it had been singled out from
amongst its neighbours and honoured. Was it honoured? It seemed to
Honora, so fanciful this day, that its unwonted air of festival was
unnatural. Why should the hour of departure from such a harbour of peace
be celebrated?

She was standing beside her husband in the little parlour, while
carriage doors slammed in the dusk outside; while one by one--a pageant
of the past which she was leaving forever the friends of her childhood
came and went. Laughter and tears and kisses! And then, in no time at
all, she found herself changing for the journey in the "little house
under the hill." There, locked up in the little desk Cousin Eleanor had
given her long ago, was the unfinished manuscript of that novel written
at fever heat during those summer days in which she had sought to escape
from a humdrum existence. And now--she had escaped. Aunt Mary, helpful
under the most trying circumstances, was putting her articles in a
bag, the initials on which she did not recognize--H. L. S.--Honora
Leffingwell Spence; while old Catherine, tearful and inefficient, knelt
before her, fumbling at her shoes. Honora, bending over, took the face
of the faithful old servant and kissed it.

"Don't feel badly, Catherine," she said; "I'll be coming back often to
see you, and you will be coming to see me."

"Will ye, darlint? The blessing of God be on you for those words--and
you to be such a fine lady! It always was a fine lady ye were, with such
a family and such a bringin' up. And now ye've married a rich man, as is
right and proper. If it's rich as Croesus he was, he'd be none too good
for you."

"Catherine," said Aunt Mary, reprovingly, "what ideas you put into the
child's head!"

"Sure, Miss Mary," cried Catherine, "it's always the great