ldish soul the sense of a promise of
happiness in the future, of which this was a foretaste. When she
went into the department where the dolls dwelt, she fairly turned
pale. They swung, and sat, and lay, and stood, as in angelic ranks,
all smiling between shining fluffs of hair. It was a chorus of
smiles, and made the child's heart fairly leap. She felt as if all
the dolls were smiling at her. She clung fast to her mother's hand,
and hid her face against her skirt.

"Why, what is the matter, Ellen?" Fanny asked. Ellen looked up, and
smiled timidly and confusedly, then at the dazzle of waxen faces and
golden locks above skirts of delicate pink and blue and white, like
flower petals.

"You never saw so many dolls together before, did you, Ellen?" said
Andrew; then he added, wistfully, "There ain't one of 'em any bigger
and prettier than your own doll, be they, Ellen?" And that,
although he had never recovered from his uneasiness about that
mysterious doll.

Ellen had not seen Cynthia Lennox since that morning several weeks
ago when she had run away from her, except one glimpse when she was
sleigh-riding. Now all at once, when they had stopped to look at
some wonderful doll-houses, she saw her face to face. Ellen had been
gazing with rapture at a great doll-house completely furnished, and
Andrew had made one of his miserable side inquiries as to its price,
and Fanny had said, quite loud, "Lord, Andrew, you might just as
well ask the price of the store! You know such a thing as that is
out of the question for any child unless her father is rich as
Norman Lloyd," and Ellen, who had not noticed what they were saying,
looked up, when a faint breath of violets smote her sense with a
quick memory, and there was the strange lady who had taken her into
her house and kept her and given her the doll, the strange lady whom
the gentleman said might be punished for keeping her if people were
to know.

Cynthia Lennox went pale when, without knowing what was going to
happen, she looked down and saw suddenly the child's innocent face
looking into hers. She stood wavering in her trailing, fur-lined,
and softly whispering draperies, so marked and set aside by her
grace and elegance and countenance of superiority and proud calm
that people turned to look after her more than after many a young
beauty, and did not, for a second, know what to say or do. She had
no mind to shrink from a recognition of the child; she had no fear
of the re