loneliness. Kate had insisted on
"lending" her Timmy in fact, the bride and bridegroom both insisted, for
there was no doubt in their minds that the black cat had brought them good
fortune. Now they had all the fortune they wanted, to "go on with," and as
poor, pretty Mrs. May seemed "a bit down on her luck," they would leave
her Timmy to bring it back again. And really the topaz-eyed creature, in
its becoming jade collar--a gift from Nick Hilliard--was often a comfort
to Angela, curled up in her lap and purring cosily under her book as she
read. It seemed curiously fond of her, even fonder than of Kate, and had
"taken to" her from the first.

Angela had travelled through a region of snowsheds to reach the lake in
the heart of the Sierra Nevada, and the scenery was as different from any
she had met in California as was her mood from the mood of the south. At
Tahoe she was a mile above sea-level, and ringed in by higher mountains
which had not lost their dazzling crowns of snow.

On the shore of the long blue lake that mirrored eternally, a clear, cool
sky and immense dark trees--pines and cedars--Angela felt that a line had
been drawn between her and her California past, with its flame of golden,
poppies and flowers of the forest. Here she had reached a high note of
beauty which rang crystalline as a silver rod striking upon ice. The place
gave Angela a sense of purity and remoteness which she had felt by no
lake-shore of Europe. The charm of other lakes had been their
villa-sprinkled shores, their historical associations. The charm of Tahoe
was loneliness. She liked to row out on the water alone, and rest on her
oars to look down, down, through miles (it seemed) of liquid sapphire and
emerald blending together.

Tahoe was not remote, really since luxurious trains had brought it into
close touch with San Francisco and with the East; but Angela liked to
cultivate the impression of remoteness as if she were a nun in retreat,
and the beauty was of a kind that called to her spirit, making
renunciation easier than in the luscious south, scented with lilies and
roses. Tahoe had its roses, too; but its chief perfume was of pines and
the pure freshness of breezes that blow over water and snow mountains.

The journey, too, had prepared her for the isolation that she craved; the
glimpse of tragic Donner Lake, where the pioneers starved and agonized in
1848; the wild Truckee River sweeping its flood past thickets of pale
sageb