ew nothing of London town, and could not prove that Mrs.
Jones had no existence. But I felt dimly dissatisfied, in spite of a
slice of sponge-cake, and being put to bed (for a treat) in papa's
dressing-room. My sleep was broken by uneasy dreams, in which Mrs.
Jones figured with the face of Mrs. Cadman and her hollow voice. I had
a sensation that that night the house never went to rest. People came
in and out with a pretentious purpose of not awaking me. My father
never came to bed. I felt convinced that I heard the doctor's voice in
the passage. At last, while it was yet dark, and when I seemed to have
been sleeping and waking, waking and falling asleep again in my crib
for weeks, my father came in with a strange look upon his face, and
took me up in his arms, and wrapped a blanket round me, saying mamma
wanted to kiss me, but I must be very good and make no noise. There
was little fear of that! I gazed in utter silence at the sweet face
that was whiter than the sheet below it, the hair that shone brighter
than ever in the candlelight. Only when I kissed her, and she had laid
her wan hand on my head, I whispered to my father, "Why is mamma so
cold?"

With a smothered groan he carried me back to bed, and I cried myself
to sleep. It was too true, then. She was too good and too pretty for
this world, and before sunrise she was gone.

Before the day was ended Sister Alice left us also. She never knew a
harder resting-place than our mother's arms.

CHAPTER II

"THE LOOK"--RUBENS--MRS. BUNDLE AGAIN

My widowed father and I were both terribly lonely. The depths of his
loss in the lovely and lovable wife who had been his constant
companion for nearly six years I could not fathom at the time. For my
own part, I was quite as miserable as I have ever been since, and I
doubt if I shall ever feel such overwhelming desolation again, unless
the same sorrow befalls me as then befell him.

I "fretted"--as the servants expressed it--to such an extent as to
affect my health; and I fancy it was because my father's attention was
called to the fact that I was fast fading after the mother and sister
whose death (and my own loneliness) I bewailed, that he roused himself
from his own grief to comfort mine. Once more I was "dressed" after
tea. Of late my bony nurse had not thought it necessary to go through
this ceremony, and I had crept about in the same crape-covered frock
from breakfast to bedtime.

Now I came down to dessert