“Eighteen, going on nineteen,” was Godfrey’s answer, and as he just then saw his father in a distant part of the vessel, he touched his hat and walked away to set in train the plan he had in his mind for benefiting Gertie Westbrooke. She interested him greatly, and he wished to do her good, and joining his father, he said: “By the way, father, have you decided which house you will rent to Mrs. Rogers?” “Rent to whom?” Colonel Schuyler asked. “Who is Mrs. Rogers?” He had forgotten her for the moment, but when Godfrey explained that she was Norah’s cousin, he remembered that something had been said about her having one of his cottages, but he had not decided which one. Why, what did it matter to Godfrey? “It matters this,” Godfrey said. “You know my house, which you gave me for my own. Perry wrote me a few days before we sailed that the tenant had left it suddenly, and there was no one in it. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to let it to Mrs. Rogers.” “Certainly, let it to her if you like,” the colonel said, pleased to see in his son what he thought a business proclivity, and a wish to make the most of his property. He little guessed that it was Godfrey’s interest in Gertie which prompted him to wish to see her in his own cottage, the best by far of all the houses known as the Schuyler tenements. It was not new like many of them, but it was very commodious and pretty, with a wealth of vines creeping over the porch, a rose tree near the door, from which Edith herself had plucked the sweet blossoms, and twined them in her hair, for Godfrey’s cottage was the very house where Mrs. Fordham once lived, and from which Abelard Lyle was carried to the grave. And Gertie Westbrooke was going there, and Godfrey was already thinking how, as soon as he reached New York, he would telegraph to Perry to have the house cleaned throughout and put in perfect repair for his new tenants. Meantime Robert Macpherson was puzzling himself over Gertie’s face and its resemblance to another. “How can they be so like, and yet nothing to each other?” he said, and once, when an opportunity occurred, he questioned the child closely with regard to her antecedents, but elicited little more information than she had already given Godfrey in his hearing. “She was Gertie Westbrooke, born in London, January —, 18—. She had lived for a while in a big house, with her mother, whom she could just remember, and who died when she was two years old, and then a new mother came, who was very cross, and Mary Rogers, her nurse, took her away, and had been so good to her ever since.” “And your father?” Robert asked. “Where is he? Do you never see him?”