er reflection in the one
looking-glass in the room. It was a beautiful old Jacobean mirror fixed
over the dressing-table.

Heavens! What a fright she looked! Do tears always have that disfiguring
effect on a woman? This must be a lesson to her. She dabbed her eyes
with a wet handkerchief, and then she went over to the writing-table and
sat down.

For the first time in her life Blanche Farrow wrote Mark Gifford a
really grateful, sincere letter. She said, truly, how touched she was by
his long devotion and by all his goodness to her. She admitted, humbly,
that she wished she were worthy of it all. But she finally added that
she feared she could never find it in her heart and conscience to say
that she would do what he wished. She had become too old, too set in her
ways....

Yet it was with a heavy heart that she wrote her long letter in answer
to his, and it took her a long time, for she often waited a few moments
in between the sentences.

How strange was her relationship to this man of whom she saw so little,
and yet with whom she felt on close, intangible terms of intimacy! His
work tied him to London, and of late years she had not been much in
London. He knew very little of her movements. Why, this very letter had
been sent to her, care of her London club, the club which had its
uses--principally--when she wanted to entertain Mark Gifford himself to
lunch or dinner.

His letter had wandered to yet another address--an address she had left
at the club weeks ago, the only address they had. From thence it had
reached the last house where she had been staying before she had come to
Wyndfell Hall. The wonderful thing was that the letter had reached her
at all. But she was very glad it had come, if only at long last.

After her letter was finished, she suddenly felt that she must put in a
word to account for the delay in her answer to what should have received
an immediate reply. And so she added a postscript, which, unlike most
women's postscripts, was of really very little importance--or so the
writer thought.

This unimportant postscript ran:

"Your letter had followed me round to about half-a-dozen places.
Bubbles Dunster and I have been spending Christmas in this
wonderful old house, Wyndfell Hall, our host being Lionel Varick.
He struck oil in the shape of an heiress two years ago. She died
last year; and he has become a most respectable member of society.
I know you didn't muc