eautiful Florentine lady who lay dead upstairs, and how
some one had told them that she had died of a broken heart from the
loss of her English husband.

"I was not with her when she breathed her last. Minnie had coaxed me
away on some pretext or other, and when I became restless and
miserable, she took me in her kind arms, and with the tears streaming
from her eyes, told the truth.

"Fern, sometimes when I shut my eyes I can recall that scene now.

"I can see a child crouching in a corner of the big gaudy salon where
a parrot was screaming in a gilded cage, a forlorn miserable child,
with her face hidden in her hands and crying as though her little
heart would break.

"I remember even now with gratitude how good the Stanforths were to
me. Minnie had a little bed placed beside hers, and would often wake
up in the middle of the night to soothe and comfort me, when I started
from some dream in a paroxysm of childish terror and grief. Young as I
was I so fretted and pined after my mother, that if we had stayed
longer in Paris I should have been ill; but, as soon as the funeral
was over, we started for England.

"Uncle Rolf had been prevented, by an attack of gout, coming to the
funeral, but he wrote to Mrs. Stanforth giving her full instructions,
and promised that if possible he would meet us at Dover.

"It was early one November morning, as I lay listlessly in my berth,
that I was aroused by the noise overhead. Was the brief voyage over, I
wondered; had we reached England so soon? and, weak as I was, I
crawled on deck, full of languid curiosity, to see my father's
country. But the first glimpse disappointed me--a leaden sea, white
chalky cliffs, and a gray sky, with black ugly-looking buildings and
ships looming out of a damp mist; this was all I could see of Old
England. And I was turning away disconsolately when Mrs. Stanforth
came up to me with a tall gentleman with a kind, brown, wrinkled face
and a gray mustache.

"'Here is your little niece, Colonel Ferrers,' I heard her say in her
pleasant clipping voice; 'poor little dear, she has fretted herself
almost to death for her mother.' Then as I hung back, rather shyly, I
felt myself lifted in my uncle's arms.

"'Little Crystal,' he said, gently, and I thought I felt a tear on my
face as he kissed me, 'my poor Edmund's child.' And then, stroking my
hair, 'But you shall come home with me and be my dear little
daughter;' and then, as the kind hand fondled me, I c