He was very much bowed and broken—his head was bald on the top, with a light fringe of silver-gray hair around his temples and the nape of his neck. He wore a dressing-gown of flowered India silk, wadded and lined and confined around the waist with a crimson silk cord and tassel. He stooped over his large, gold-headed cane as he walked. Some men soon recover from severe bereavements, others never do. Commodore Bruce belonged to the latter class. He had never rallied from the overwhelming grief of Lonny’s loss. Every year, on his son’s birthday, he had said: “If my Lonny were now alive he would be this old.” And only in the beginning of _that_ year he had said: “Ah, if my poor Lonny were alive now he would be thirty-five years old. In the very prime and pride of life, in the vigor and glory of his manhood!” Commodore Bruce came in slowly, leaning on his cane, as I said, and looking keenly from side to side as if to see who was in the room, for his sight was always dim. “Ah, nobody here scarcely. These women are always unpunctual. They need a little navy discipline to train them. But who is this? Who is this, Ronald?” he exclaimed as his eyes fell upon Em. “This is Miss Palmer, a young lady my mother has staying with her,” said young Bruce not quite frankly. “Oh, how do you do, my dear. I am very glad to see you. I hope you will enjoy yourself among us,” said the old man with formal politeness, taking her hand, yet scarcely looking in her face. “I thank you, sir, but I am only Mrs. Bruce’s seamstress,” said Em., amending Ronald’s little error. “Eh?” exclaimed the commodore, looking more attentively in her face. Em. repeated her assertion. But Commodore Bruce was not listening to her words or caring for them. He was gazing in her face as if he were transfixed. At length he recovered himself, found his voice and said: “I beg your pardon, my dear, but I seem to have seen you somewhere else long before this.” “Yes, sir, you did—in the city, more than a year ago, when you were at the Indian Queen Hotel, and I carried home some shirts to you,” said Em. “Ay—ay—ay—ay! I remember that! But this was long, long before! Yet no, you could not be so told! It must be some one whom you closely resemble that I remember and am thinking of! Yes—yes! I know now! Ah, that poor, unhappy one! What has ever become of her? Where lies her broken heart? And she was my Lonny’s last charge to me before he left me for the last time. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘for my sake be kind to poor Emolyn!’ Ah! she was my poor boy’s sweetheart, I doubt! But she is gone! gone! This girl looks like her! Looks as she did before that blasting calamity fell upon her! An accidental likeness! The world is full of such! Yet I wish I had not seen it!” murmured the old man in a musing tone. Ronald Bruce led him to a chair, placed him in it, took the cane from his hand and set it up and then gave him a glass of wine.