w I felt towards him,
until I had gone away and then received this letter."

I had been listening, looking into her fine, clear, blue eyes, which
honestly and truly, with the frankness and candor of the child or the
chaste woman, had expressed the love that had been in her heart and,
perhaps, lingered there still. So intent had I been upon her words that
I had failed to hear adventitious sounds. Frances, also, with her hand
pressed to her bosom, showed eyes dimmed by gathering tears. She had
risen with the impulse to go forward and press this suffering woman to
her heart. I was about to explain the message of love in Gordon's
postscript, when there was a wheezing at the door, which had been left
open.

Fat and beaming, with her most terrible hat and a smudge of yellow ochre
on her chin, Frieda came in.

"Beg your pardon," she panted. "It's getting real warm and the stairs
are becoming steeper every day. How's the angel lamb?"

"Miss Van Rossum," I said, "let me introduce our excellent friend Miss
Frieda Long. Every one who knows her loves her. She's the next best
painter to Gordon in this burg, or any other, and a second mother to
Baby Paul."

Miss Sophia stared at her for an instant. Then, came a little smile in
which there was relief and comprehension. She advanced with arm
outstretched, and Frieda went right up to her.

"My dear," said the latter, "our dear old Dave and Gordon have told us
enough about you to make me feel glad indeed to know you. I saw that
portrait of yours and it didn't flatter you a bit, in fact, it seems to
me that it missed something of your expression. But it was mighty good,
just the same, like everything he ever did."

She backed off as far as the bed, on which she sat down, fanning herself
violently with a newspaper. An instant later she rushed to Frances, took
up the baby with the usual robust delicacy she always shows in that
process, and began to ask news relating to important developments in
dentition.

Miss Sophia observed her. I saw that some ray of gladness had entered
her heart since a terrible question appeared to be settled
satisfactorily. To her tall and graceful womanhood the idea that our
darling, pudgy Frieda, with her crow's feet, from much staring through
her spectacles, with that fright of a hat, could for a second have been
mistaken for a rival was nothing less than amusing.

"Well, Mr. Cole, I think I will have to be going now," she said. "I--I
am glad--oh, I m