first
intention was to endow institutions. For instance, within a week after
Barbara received the lawyer's announcement, she consulted me as to how
she could best make provision for an old lady who has been for years
more or less of a pensioner of her father's family. The dear old woman
with a little aid has supported herself for many years, but lately it
has seemed as if she would have to give up the wee bit of a home she
loves so much and become an inmate of some great Institution, and this
would almost break her heart. Barbara was in haste to put enough money
at her disposal so that a good woman may be hired to come and care for
her so long as she shall live, and to provide for all her wants. Also
she remembered a poor young girl, once her and Betty's schoolmate, who
has always longed for further study, whose one ambition has been to go
to college. This was simply impossible, not even the strictest economy,
even the going without necessities, has gathered together sufficient
money for the expenses of a single year. Before we left Rome, Barbara
arranged for the deposit in the bank at home of enough money to permit
this struggling girl to look forward with certainty to a college course,
and wrote the letter which will bring her so much joy.

"Dear child!" she continued tenderly, after a pause; "the only bit of
money she has yet spent for herself was to get the spring outfits that
she and Betty have really needed for some time, but for which they did
not like to use their father's money.

"And I do believe," after another pause, "that the two girls' lives will
be passed as unostentatiously as if the money had not come to them."

"Why do you speak as if the money had come to both?" asked Miss
Sherman, with a curious inflection of the voice.

"Did I? I did not realize it. But I will not change my words; for,
unless I mistake much, the money will be Bettina's as much as Barbara's,
and this, because Barbara will have it so."

The words were hardly spoken by Mrs. Douglas when Mr. Sumner, who was
riding backward and so facing the following carriage, sprang up, crying
in a low, smothered tone of alarm, "Barbara!"

But Mrs. Douglas had not time to turn before he sank back saying:
"Excuse me. I must have been mistaken. I thought that something was the
matter; that Barbara had been taken ill."

Then he added, in explanation to his sister: "The carriage was so far
back, as it rounded a curve, permitting me to look into it,