e him, so of course I
loved you at once."

"And you never asked any questions?"

Alice looked surprised. "Why, no; if father had wished to tell me any
more he would have done so without my asking."

"I am glad," Eleanor said, simply. "It is better for me to tell you
myself."

Mrs. Gorham paused, and Alice realized that this was not the time to
interrupt. Eleanor seemed to be bracing herself as for an ordeal, yet
when she spoke the words came with perfect calmness.

"You were ten years old when your mother died," she said.

The girl's face saddened. "Yes, just Pat's age now; and the next four
years were so lonely until you came. I try never to think of them. Pat
was too young to give me any companionship, so I was virtually alone
with my governess. Father never realized my unhappiness. He was so busy
with his own matters that, young as I was, I knew that he must not have
mine to worry about."

"Those were the years in which I suffered, too," Eleanor replied,
quietly. "Perhaps that is what drew us so closely together from the
first. Four years of torture!" she continued, more to herself than to
the girl before her.

"Why do you speak of them?" Alice begged. "Why not forget them, as I
have tried to do?"

"I do try, dear, but the play to-night brought everything back to me.
How strange that we should happen on that particular one so soon after
your father and I had spoken of those years! The 'Great Divide'--God
only knows the human agony and truth those words contain!"

Eleanor controlled herself before she continued.

"It is a story which I have told only once before, and I had not thought
to take any one except your father into its sad confidences; but you
should know it, dear. My father's health broke down after mother died,
and he was ordered West in the hope of prolonging his life. I was
sixteen then, two years younger than you are now. We went to Colorado,
on a ranch which father had bought upon the recommendation of a friend.
How well I remember the first impressions I received of that glorious
country: the exhilaration of that wonderful air, the inspiration of
those towering mountains, the novelty of the strange new conditions! I
rejoiced in the largeness of everything, and it seemed to me, those
first few days, as though life amid these surroundings could but
reflect the richness with which nature itself overflowed."

Alice's eyes were fixed upon Eleanor's face with intense interest. The
girl sensed