“Howard, I have done something which I trust you will approve. That poor woman is distressed about leaving Gertie alone, and I have promised that she shall live with us.” “Certainly, if you wish it,” the colonel said, thinking of Jamie, and how much he was attached to Gertie Westbrooke. “Yes, but that is not all. I have promised to take her as an equal; not as a servant in any form. I am to treat her and educate her as if she were my sister. Are you willing, Howard? If not, say so at once, that I may take back my pledge for if she dies with my promise given, I must keep it to the letter. Are you willing, Howard?” He did not know whether he was or not. He only knew that it was very disagreeable being turned out of bed at midnight and brought through the storm to this comfortless room, where the fire in the stove did not burn, and the one candle on the table ran up a huge black wick and smelled horribly of tallow; and then, to crown all, Edith must ask if he was willing to take into his family and treat as her sister a little obscure girl, whose mother took in fluting, and ironing, and mopping, too, for aught he knew, for a living. Yes, it was hard, and his eyebrows came together, and his hands went further into his pockets, while he sat a moment in silence. Then he said: “Do you wish it very much?” “Yes, I wish it,” Edith said, “more than I have wished for anything in years.” “Then take her,” was the response; and with a kiss of thanks, Edith went back to the sick-room where Mrs. Rogers was now asleep, with her head pillowed on Gertie’s shoulder. But the slumber did not last long, and when the gray, wet wintry morning looked into the room, Mary Rogers was dead, and what she had tried so hard to tell Edith Schuyler had not been told. Gertie’s grief at first was wild and passionate, but Edith comforted her as best she could, and led her up to her own chamber, the little room where she once had dreamed of future happiness and then wept bitterly over its ruin. As she entered the apartment and cast her eye upon the opposite wall, she started involuntarily, while the words rose to her lips, “How came _my_ picture here?” But it was “_La Sœur_,” which Robert, who was in New York for the winter, had finished and given Gertie permission to hang in her room, and which at first struck Edith forcibly as a likeness of herself when, a girl of fifteen, she used to look from the windows of that room for the coming of Abelard. As she examined it more closely, however, the likeness faded, and she could not see Heloise Fordham in it as plainly as she did at first. “Edith, my dear,—you really must go now. I cannot allow you to remain any longer,” came from the foot of the stairs, where the colonel was standing, and with a kiss for the desolate child, and a promise to come again before the day was over, and to send Norah to stay altogether till after the funeral, Edith joined her impatient lord and was driven rapidly home.