twisting the thread, and bringing visions of the
years gone by.

A cracked mirror hung against the wall and Ruth saw her reflection
dimly, as if she, too, belonged to the ghosts of the attic. She was
not vain, but she was satisfied with her eyes and hair, her white skin,
impervious to tan or burn, and the shape of her mouth. The saucy little
upward tilt at the end of her nose was a great cross to her, however,
because it was at variance with the dignified bearing which she chose to
maintain. As she looked, she wondered, vaguely, if she, like Aunt
Jane, would grow to a loveless old age. It seemed probable, for, at
twenty-five, The Prince had not appeared. She had her work and was
happy; yet unceasingly, behind those dark eyes, Ruth's soul kept
maidenly match for its mate.

When she turned to go downstairs, a folded newspaper on the floor
attracted her attention. It was near one of the trunks which she had
opened and must have fallen out. She picked it up, to replace it, but it
proved to be another paper dated a year later than the first one. There
was no marked paragraph, but she soon discovered the death notice of
"Abigail Winfield, nee Weatherby, aged twenty-two." She put it into
the trunk out of which she knew it must have fallen, and stood there,
thinking. Those faded letters, hidden under Aunt Jane's wedding gown,
were tempting her with their mute secret as never before. She hesitated,
took three steps toward the cedar chest, then fled ingloriously from the
field.

Whoever Charles Winfeld was, he was free to love and marry again.
Perhaps there had been an estrangement and it was he for whom Aunt
Jane was waiting, since sometimes, out of bitterness, the years distil
forgiveness. She wondered at the nature which was tender enough to keep
the wedding gown and the pathetic little treasures, brave enough to keep
the paper, with its evidence of falseness, and great enough to forgive.

Yet, what right had she to suppose Aunt Jane was waiting? Had she gone
abroad to seek him and win his recreant heart again? Or was Abigail
Weatherby her girlhood friend, who had married unhappily, and then died?

Somewhere in Aunt Jane's fifty-five years there was a romance, but,
after all, it was not her niece's business. "I'm an imaginative
goose," Ruth said to herself. "I'm asked to keep a light in the window,
presumably as an incipient lighthouse, and I've found some old clothes
and two old papers in the attic--that's all--and I've