intense longing is
always followed by disappointment. Nothing should have happened that
summer, and Providence should not have come disguised as the postman. It
was a sultry day in early September-which is to say that it was
comparatively cool--a blue day, with occasional great drops of rain
spattering on the brick walk. And Honora was reclining on the hall sofa,
reading about Mr. Ibbetson and his duchess, when she perceived the
postman's grey uniform and smiling face on the far side of the screen
door. He greeted her cordially, and gave her a single letter for Aunt
Mary, and she carried it unsuspectingly upstairs.

"It's from Cousin Eleanor," Honora volunteered.

Aunt Mary laid down her sewing, smoothed the ruffles of her sacque,
adjusted her spectacles, opened the envelope, and began to read.
Presently the letter fell to her lap, and she wiped her glasses and
glanced at Honora, who was deep in her book once more. And in Honora's
brain, as she read, was ringing the refrain of the prisoner:

"Orleans, Beaugency!
Notre Dame de Clery!
Vendome! Vendome!
Quel chagrin, quel ennui
De compter toute la nuit
Les heures, les heures!".

The verse appealed to Honora strangely; just as it had appealed to
Ibbetson. Was she not, too, a prisoner. And how often, during the summer
days and nights, had she listened to the chimes of the Pilgrim Church
near by?

"One, two, three, four!
One, two, three, four!"

After Uncle Tom had watered his flowers that evening, Aunt Mary followed
him upstairs and locked the door of their room behind her. Silently she
put the letter in his hand. Here is one paragraph of it:

"I have never asked to take the child from you in the summer,
because she has always been in perfect health, and I know how lonely
you would have been without her, my dear Mary. But it seems to me
that a winter at Sutcliffe, with my, girls, would do her a world of
good just now. I need not point out to you that Honora is, to say
the least, remarkably good looking, and that she has developed very
rapidly. And she has, in spite of the strict training you have
given her, certain ideas and ambitions which seem to me, I am sorry
to say, more or less prevalent among young American women these
days. You know it is only because I love her that I am so frank.
Miss Turner's influence will, in my o