“Not now--please,” answered Cecily. “I’ll go over the things when I can.” As Della said to Walter, it wasn’t as if Cecily could possibly wear all that jewelry herself. It seemed a kind of waste. Walter gave her one of the looks which he had learned how to give her when he was disgusted, and she tossed her head and reserved her comments for her more intimate woman friends. So on this bright May morning Cecily sat in her mother’s room on the little hassock by her mother’s chaise longue and looked about her at the objects that had become freighted with memory, wondering just what her mother’s inward life had been, where it had hurt her most, what she had loved most. The lovely gowns in their chintz wrappers each brought a pang of pain. She could see her mother in them--lovely, gracious, charming, every one--and now they could no longer be given life. They were empty, meaningless decorations. The softest satins--the dresses which “looked like her mother”--she laid away in a deep mahogany chest. They were to be for Dorothea some day to carry her the spirit of a past. The dressing table fittings she would take, too, and the little objects around the room that her mother had loved to look at. She would hang that head of the Madonna, which her mother had found in Italy, at the foot of her own bed. It was a long, sad task for Cecily, but with flashes of comfort. She had the sense of being close to her mother again. At last she opened the little wall safe which her mother had had constructed. The red jewel case of velvet was there with all but the few jewels which Mrs. Warner had worn in California and which already had been given to Cecily, to Della’s disgust. There was her mother’s pearl necklace which Mr. Warner had given her; the diamonds which had been the gifts of birthdays and anniversaries; the odd, exquisite things which Mrs. Warner had brought for beauty’s sake; other jewels, too, which Cecily had never seen; that other wedding ring, engraved with name and date. It gave her a stir at her heart. That wedding ring had meant her--Cecily. A cabinet photograph of her father--handsome, queerly out of fashion. She pondered the photograph. There was a look of her little Leslie, named after Mr. Warner. Strange to have Mr. Warner’s name carried on through this child who looked so much like Allgate Moore. Envelopes with baby pictures of herself, that brought the tears to her eyes. Letters. Letters which must have been written from her father to her mother. Yes. She had kept those, then. She had wanted to preserve, even through the pain, these letters which must have been letters of love from her father. Even through the disappointment and the infidelities. It did not occur to Cecily to read them. She took them to her mother’s little fireplace and burned them there. They had no meaning now to any one alive.