he quickly stifled it. After all she
was about to begin the work she herself had chosen. She had known when
she announced her determination to take charge of Harlowe House that
things could never be quite the same. It would be selfish, indeed, in
her to break down and cry when Mrs. Gray had come to Overton solely to
help her select the furniture and plan for the opening of Harlowe House
in September.

Grace pulled herself together and, resolutely putting her own sense of
loss behind her, said steadily: "I couldn't help thinking of the girls
for a minute. It made me want to cry, but I've set my face to the future
now, and I'm sure that my new work is going to bring me as much
happiness here as I had during the other dear four years. When I think
of how splendid it was in you to give Harlowe House to Overton, I feel
as though there isn't any sacrifice too great for me to make to insure
its success, and I hope that my coming back to Overton Campus to do my
work is going to mean a thousand times more to me next June than it does
now."

CHAPTER II

A WELCOME GUEST

The summer sun, streaming intimately in at the window of her room, and
touching her hair with warm, awakening fingers, caused Grace to open her
eyes before six o'clock the next morning. She lay looking about her,
unable for the moment to remember where she was. Then she laughed and
reaching for her kimono, which hung folded across the footboard of the
bed, slipped it on, and, thrusting her feet into her bedroom slippers,
went to the window.

"Dear old Overton Hall," she murmured, her eyes fixed lovingly on the
stately gray tower of the building that she had come to regard as a
close friend. Again she found herself overwhelmed by a tide of
reminiscences. How many times she and Anne had stood at the self-same
window, arm in arm, gazing out at the self-same sights. She could see
the very seat at the foot of the big tree where she had sat the day Emma
Dean had poked her head about the big syringa bush and mournfully handed
her the letter from Ruth Denton's father which had been buried in the
pocket of Emma's coat for so many weeks. She smiled as she recalled the
ludicrously penitent expression with which Emma had delivered the
letter. There were the library steps on which Arline Thayer had sat and
cried so disconsolately because she could not go home for Christmas.
Once more she saw a strange procession winding its way across the campus
headed by a walk