We read how it is always darkest just before the dawn. Angela, who knew that pleasant things rarely just happened, indoors, had gone out, so it was that she missed the direct distribution of gifts. But, as it chanced, she had been having her first really good time, since the earlier part of the bridge-party. In fact, on Washington Street, at about the same time and place, she had met Mr. Tilletts again; and now he was not hurried at all. It pleasantly developed that Mr. Tilletts's doctor had ordered him to stop riding around in his great car, and that henceforth he would be walking constantly. Moreover, the genial gallant, after a considerable promenade, had taken Angela to tea at Mrs. Hasseltine's famous shop, and, at parting--sure enough--made a provisional engagement to call "one evening this week." Altogether, the coterie seemed in a fair way to pick up a new member, after all. Whether fascinating or overplump, Widower Tilletts unquestionably possessed the magic power, wielded by man alone, to restore the self-esteem of a neglected young girl. Angela opened the front door of home in a livelier humor than had been hers for weeks. And so entering, she found her mother standing in the hall, and heard at once tidings which, though not for her exactly, yet made her forget herself altogether. Mrs. Ashburton had been, and gone. Mrs. Ashburton was going to send Wallie to college, at once. Mrs. Ashburton was going to give Wallie _five hundred dollars a year_, till he had got his education. This oft-cited lady, at last the waver of the magic wand, was Mrs. Flower's first cousin. Close friends in their girlhood, their ways had long ago parted; and, since Dr. and Mrs. Flower's visit to New York in 1896, amenities between them had hardly gone beyond an exchange of cards at Christmas. But now it happened that Mrs. Ashburton, _en route_ to a balmier clime than hers, had "broken her trip" here, after the frequent way of tourists, and, having duly viewed the sights of the city from a cab window through the morning, had bethought her to look up her resident kin. So the rich relation came to the little house on Center Street.