ght turn out a myth--that the phantom so suddenly conjured up might
depart as quickly as it had arrived. At last the story came to a
conclusion. There was a pause, and Charlotte said,----

"Well, Uncle Jasper?"

"Well, Lottie?" he answered. And now he roused himself, and bent a
little forward.

"Is the story true, Uncle Jasper?"

"It is certainly true, Charlotte, that my father and your grandfather
married again."

"Yes, uncle."

"It is also highly probable that this young woman is the daughter of
that marriage. When I saw her in this room to-day I was puzzled by an
intangible likeness in her. This accounts for it."

"Then why----" began Charlotte, and then she stopped. There was a whole
world of bitterness in her tone.

"Sit down, child," said her uncle. He pointed to a footstool at his
feet. Whenever he came into this room Charlotte had occupied this
footstool, and he wanted her to take it now, but she would not; she
still kept her place on the hearth.

"I cannot sit," she said. "I am excited--greatly excited. This looks to
me in the light of a wrong."

"Who do you think has committed the wrong, Charlotte?"

Before she answered, Charlotte Harman lit a pair of candles which stood
on the mantelshelf.

"There, now," she said with a sigh of relief, "I can see your face. It
is dreadful to speak to any one in the dark. Uncle Jasper, if I had so
near a relation living all these years why was I never told of it? I
have over and over again longed for a sister, and it seems I had one or
one who might have been to me a sister. Why was I kept in ignorance of
her very existence?"

"You are like all women--unreasonable, Lottie. I am glad to find you so
human, my dear; so human, and--and--womanly. You jump to conclusions
without hearing reasons. Now I will give you the reasons. But I do wish
you would sit down."

"I will sit here," said Charlotte, and she drew a chair near the table.
The room abounded in easy-chairs of all sizes and descriptions, but she
chose one hard and made of cane, and she sat upright upon it, her hands
folded on her lap. "Now, Uncle Jasper," she said, "I am ready to hear
your reasons."

"They go a good way back, my dear, and I am not clever at telling a
story; but I will do my best. Your grandfather made his money in trade;
he made a good business, and he put your father and me both into it. It
is unnecessary to go into particulars about our special business; it was
small at first, but we