eeting would lead to, of the home that
it would give me among my girlhood friends, filled with the love and
sympathy which my heart had always craved. Now you know the whole story,
Alice dear--now you know why the tears come sometimes to my eyes as I
press to my heart that quaint, precious little sister of yours, so near
the age Carina would have been, who softens the memory of the sweet dead
face by giving to it a living reality."

"I understand," the girl cried, throwing her arms about Eleanor's neck
and embracing her warmly. "I can't say the right thing now I am so
unstrung, but I love you even more than ever because you've let me
share it with you."

So they separated for the night--the woman's heart bleeding from the
reopening of the former wound, yet happier that her accepted confidante
had become acquainted with that part of her life which was consecrated
to a memory; the girl made older by the sudden drawing of the curtain
from one of life's daily yet unheralded tragedies.

VIII

Stephen Sanford arrived in Washington two days later. Little as the boy
realized it, his father's pride in his son was unbounded, and stood out
in marked contrast to the sterner elements in his character which had
combined in such fashion as to enable him to carve out a success among
and in competition with the sturdy, persistent business luminaries who
developed Pittsburgh from an uncouth bed of iron and coal into a great
manufacturing centre. His friends rallied him on his many indulgences to
his son, all of which he accepted in good part, with a uniform rejoinder
that, say what they liked, his son was going to be brought up a
gentleman.

Allen's boyhood was guided by private tutors, and so hemmed in with
conventions which even to his youthful mind were obviously veneers, that
it was with a positive relief that he welcomed the change from the
restraint of home to the freedom of college life. Yet the boy naturally
possessed inherent qualities which, while not leading him to drink too
deeply from the fount of wisdom, still kept him within lines which won
for him the affection of his fellows and the respect of his instructors,
even though his standing as a student was far below what the professors
thought it might have been.

During all this period his father followed his career with that same
care and insight which had characterized his own business success. He
was proud of the position which the boy took--proud of his ab