lost sun.
The old lady looked her approval at Fifth Avenue, with all its crudities
veiled and softened by the snowfall, and as she climbed into an omnibus
expressed herself firmly to Regina.

"You mark my words, the sun will be out before we come home!"

Regina, punching the two dimes carefully into the jolting receiver, made
only a respectful murmur for answer. She was, like many a maid, a snob
where her mistress was concerned, and she did not like to have Mrs.
Melrose ride in public omnibuses. For Regina herself it did not matter,
but Mrs. Melrose was one of the city's prominent and wealthy women, and
Regina could not remember that she had ever sunk to the use of a public
conveyance before to-day. The maid was glad when they descended at a
street in the East Sixties. They would probably be sent home, she
reflected, in Mrs. Liggett's car. For Regina noticed that private cars
were beginning to grind and slip over the snow again.

Old Mrs. Melrose was going to see her daughter Alice, who was Mrs.
Christopher Liggett, because Alice was an invalid. It had been only a
few years after Alice's most felicitous marriage, a dozen years ago,
when an accident had laid the lovely and brilliant woman upon the bed of
helplessness that she might never leave again. There was no real reason
why the spine should continue useless, the great specialists said, there
was a hope--even a probability--that as Alice grew rested and strong,
after the serious accident, she might find herself walking again. But
Alice had been a prisoner for ten years now, and the mother and sister
who idolized her feared that she would never again be the old dancing
Alice and feared that she knew it. What Christopher Liggett feared they
did not know. He insisted that Alice's illness was but temporary, and
was tireless in his energetic pursuit of treatment for his wife.
Everything must be hoped, and everything must be tried, and Alice's
mother knew that one of the real crosses of her daughter's life was
sorrowful pity for Chris's optimistic delusions.

The young Liggetts had sold the old house of Christopher's father, an
immense brownstone mansion a few squares away, and lived in a modern,
flat-faced gray-stone house that rose five stories from the beautifully
arranged basement entrance. There were stone benches at the entrance,
and a great iron grill, and two potted trees, and the small square
windows were leaded, and showed blossoming plants inside. The three l