r is necessary as background and support?"

"No, I did not know it," said Anne, in a disheartened voice.

"What a friend for Helen Lorrington! No wonder she has pounced upon you!
You would never see one of her manoeuvres, although done within an inch
of you. With your believing eyes, and your sincerity, you are worth your
weight in silver to that straw-faced mermaid. But, after all, I do not
interfere. Let her only obtain a good situation for you next year, and
pay you back in more useful coin than fine dresses, and I make no
objection."

She settled herself anew in the corner of the carriage, and began the
process of extracting a seed, while Anne, silent and dejected, gazed
into the snow-covered street, asking herself whether Helen and all this
world were really as selfish and hypocritical as her grandaunt
represented. But these thoughts soon gave way to the predominant one,
the one that always came to her when with Miss Vanhorn--the thought of
her mother.

"During the summer, do you still live in the old country house on the
Hudson, grandaunt?"

Miss Vanhorn, who had just secured a seed, dropped it. "I am not aware
that my old country house is anything to you," she answered, tartly,
fitting on her flapping glove-fingers, and beginning a second search.

A sob rose in Anne's throat; but she quelled it. Her mother had spent
all her life, up to the time of her marriage, at that old river
homestead.

Soon after this, Madame Moreau sent out cards of invitation for one of
her musical evenings. Miss Vanhorn's card was accompanied by a little
note in Tante's own handwriting.

* * * * *

"The invitation is merely a compliment which I give myself the pleasure
of paying to a distinguished patron of my school" (wrote the old French
lady). "There will be nothing worthy of her ear--a simple school-girls'
concert, in which Miss Douglas (who will have the kind assistance of
Mrs. Lorrington) will take part. I can not urge, for so unimportant an
affair, the personal presence of Miss Vanhorn; but I beg her to accept
the inclosed card as a respectful remembrance from

"HORTENSE-PAULINE MOREAU."

* * * * *

"That will bring her," thought Tante, sealing the missive, in her
old-fashioned way, with wax.

She was right; Miss Vanhorn came.

Anne sang first alone. Then with Helen.

"Isn't that Mrs. Lorrington?" said a voice behind Miss Vanhorn.

"Yes. My Louise te