of the most precious gifts ever given, if
the value of gifts is gauged by the measure of self-sacrifice involved.
In that little book was immortal love--old laughter--old tears--old
beauty which had bloomed like a rose years ago, holding still its
sweetness like old rose leaves. She removed the telltale fly-leaf; and
late on the night before Sylvia's birthday, the Old Lady crept, under
cover of the darkness, through byways and across fields, as if bent on
some nefarious expedition, to the little Spencervale store where the
post-office was kept. She slipped the thin parcel through the slit in
the door, and then stole home again, feeling a strange sense of loss
and loneliness. It was as if she had given away the last link between
herself and her youth. But she did not regret it. It would give Sylvia
pleasure, and that had come to be the overmastering passion of the Old
Lady's heart.

The next night the light in Sylvia's room burned very late, and the
Old Lady watched it triumphantly, knowing the meaning of it. Sylvia was
reading her father's poems, and the Old Lady in her darkness read them
too, murmuring the lines over and over to herself. After all, giving
away the book had not mattered so very much. She had the soul of it
still--and the fly-leaf with the name, in Leslie's writing, by which
nobody ever called her now.

The Old Lady was sitting on the Marshall sofa the next Sewing Circle
afternoon when Sylvia Gray came and sat down beside her. The Old Lady's
hands trembled a little, and one side of a handkerchief, which was
afterwards given as a Christmas present to a little olive-skinned coolie
in Trinidad, was not quite so exquisitely done as the other three sides.

Sylvia at first talked of the Circle, and Mrs. Marshall's dahlias, and
the Old Lady was in the seventh heaven of delight, though she took care
not to show it, and was even a little more stately and finely mannered
than usual. When she asked Sylvia how she liked living in Spencervale,
Sylvia said,

"Very much. Everybody is so kind to me. Besides"--Sylvia lowered her
voice so that nobody but the Old Lady could hear it--"I have a fairy
godmother here who does the most beautiful and wonderful things for me."

Sylvia, being a girl of fine instincts, did not look at Old Lady Lloyd
as she said this. But she would not have seen anything if she had
looked. The Old Lady was not a Lloyd for nothing.

"How very interesting," she said, indifferently.

"Isn't it