he was glad to do. I declare she made as much of
it as if it had been the governor's ball. She told me how much she
enjoyed your singing. She said that, if there was any one person in the
world whom she envied more than another, it was Lloyd Sherman. Not for
your looks or the handsome things you have (for the Valley is full of
pretty girls, and many of them are wealthy), but for the advantages you
have had in the way of music and travel.

"They have an old piano, about all that was saved out of the wreck when
their father lost his fortune. She'd give her eyes to be able to play on
it. But she wasn't much more than a baby when her father died, so she
missed the advantages the older girls had. You see she is twenty years
younger than Marietta, and nearly twenty-five years younger than Sarah.
Poor Agnes! I suppose she will never know anything but work and poverty.
It's too bad,--such a sweet, refined girl, and as proud as she is
poor."

Lloyd echoed Mrs. Bisbee's sympathetic sigh, as she looked after the
hurrying figure in its worn jacket and shabby shoes. She was just coming
out of the store again.

"I feel so sorry for her sistahs, too," she ventured. "I nevah knew till
the othah day that Miss Marietta has been an invalid so long. Miss
Allison told me she had been in bed for fifteen yeahs! It's awful! Why,
that is as long as my whole lifetime has been."

"She was to have been married," began Mrs. Bisbee, pouring out the
romance at which Miss Allison had only hinted. "She was engaged to
Murray Cathright, one of the finest young lawyers I ever knew, steady as
a meeting-house. He had the respect and confidence of everybody. Well,
Marietta had her trousseau all ready, and a beautiful one it was. Her
father had sent to Paris for the wedding-gown, and all her linen was
hand-embroidered by the nuns in some French convent.

"They certainly had all that heart could wish in those days. It is a
pity that Agnes was too young to enjoy her share of luxuries. Well, just
a week before the time set for the wedding, Murray Cathright
mysteriously disappeared. He had gone away on a short business trip. His
family traced him to a hotel in Pittsburg, and then lost all clue,
except that just before leaving the hotel he had asked the clerk for the
time-tables of an Eastern railroad. There was a terrible wreck on that
road that same night. The entire train went through a bridge into the
river, and they thought he must have been swept away w