glad that the dear child has a fine day to be married," she
said.

Juliet Gordon was always "dear child" to Miss Corona, although the two
had never spoken to each other in their lives.

Miss Corona was a brisk and early riser as a rule, with a genuine
horror of lazy people who lay late abed or took over-long to get their
eyes well opened, but this morning she made no hurry about rising,
even though scurrying footsteps, banging doors, and over-loud tinkling
of dishes in the room below betokened that Charlotta was already up
and about. And Charlotta, as poor Miss Corona knew only too well, was
fatally sure to do something unfortunate if she were not under some
careful, overseeing eye. To be sure, Charlotta's intentions were
always good.

But Miss Corona was not thinking about Charlotta this morning, and she
felt so strong a distaste for her lonely, purposeless life that she
was in no haste to go forth to meet another day of it.

Miss Corona felt just the least little bit tired of living, although
she feared it was very wicked of her to feel so. She lay there
listlessly for half an hour longer, looking through a mist of tears at
the portrait of her stern old father hanging on the wall at the foot
of the bed, and thinking over the Quarrel.

It had happened thirty years ago, when Miss Corona had been a girl of
twenty, living alone with her father at the old Gordon homestead on
the hill, with the big black spruce grove behind it on the north and
far-reaching slopes of green fields before it on the south. Down in
the little northern valley below the spruce grove lived her uncle,
Alexis Gordon. His son, Meredith, had seemed to Corona as her own
brother. The mothers of both were dead; neither had any other brother
or sister. The two children had grown up together, playmates and
devoted friends. There had never been any sentiment or lovemaking
between them to mar a perfect comradeship. They were only the best of
friends, whatever plans the fathers might have cherished for the union
of their estates and children, putting the property consideration
first, as the Gordons were always prone to do.

But, if Roderick and Alexis Gordon had any such plans, all went by the
board when they quarreled. Corona shivered yet over the bitterness of
that time. The Gordons never did anything half-heartedly. The strife
between the two brothers was determined and irreconcilable.

Corona's father forbade her to speak to her uncle and cousin o