its grip.

"Father was dead, too, when I returned," she said at last, her eyes
still gazing into space.

"The excitement killed him?" Alice asked, breathlessly, still further
shocked by the double tragedy.

"That and his anxiety over my unexplained absence."

"Your absence?" queried the girl, mystified by Eleanor's apparent
incoherency. "Didn't you just say that he was dead when you returned?"

Mrs. Gorham started violently. "What am I saying!" she cried,
involuntarily. In a moment she was herself again. "Yes, dear, of course
I returned; but not as soon as he expected, and the shock of it all
killed him. You understand, don't you? I was very ill, and a friend
helped me to a hospital in Denver."

"But you said you had no friends except the man you married," Alice
urged, trying to follow the narrative.

"Yes, dear, you are right," Eleanor replied somewhat confused; "but one
always finds friends when in trouble, you know. It was so with me, and
after I recovered my strength I lived on there in Denver with the small
legacy my father left me, supplemented later by a little more from the
sale of the ranch. A year after Carina's death I applied for a divorce,
on the ground of desertion. My lawyer found Ralph somewhere to serve the
summons on him, and reported him as having already become a professional
gambler and a confirmed drunkard. He made no defence at the trial, and I
have never seen him since."

"But it's all over now, Eleanor dear," Alice said, soothingly. "Daddy
and I will try to make up to you for what you have been through. You
must let us do that."

"You have done it already," Eleanor replied, feelingly, her temporary
obsession having passed. "You and darling little Patricia have become a
real part of my life, and my one prayer has been that I could do as much
for you. Your father restored my lost faith in men almost the first time
I met him in my lawyer's office in Denver."

"Yes." Alice accepted the tribute to her father as a matter of fact. "He
nearly killed himself in Pittsburgh before he gave up his business
there, and he went out West two or three times to get back his health.
And the last time he brought you back, too. I have always loved the West
for that."

Mrs. Gorham smiled as she continued: "I learned of his work from others
and from himself, and rejoiced to find a man with real ideals, in
business and in his every-day life, actually lived up to. I had no
notion of what that first chance m