Mrs. Home's tale had been put into skilful hands. It was well told--all the better because the speaker so earnestly hoped that its existence might turn out a myth--that the phantom so suddenly conjured up might depart as quickly as it had arrived. At last the story came to a conclusion. There was a pause, and Charlotte said,---- "Well, Uncle Jasper?" "Well, Lottie?" he answered. And now he roused himself, and bent a little forward. "Is the story true, Uncle Jasper?" "It is certainly true, Charlotte, that my father and your grandfather married again." "Yes, uncle." "It is also highly probable that this young woman is the daughter of that marriage. When I saw her in this room to-day I was puzzled by an intangible likeness in her. This accounts for it." "Then why----" began Charlotte, and then she stopped. There was a whole world of bitterness in her tone. "Sit down, child," said her uncle. He pointed to a footstool at his feet. Whenever he came into this room Charlotte had occupied this footstool, and he wanted her to take it now, but she would not; she still kept her place on the hearth. "I cannot sit," she said. "I am excited--greatly excited. This looks to me in the light of a wrong." "Who do you think has committed the wrong, Charlotte?" Before she answered, Charlotte Harman lit a pair of candles which stood on the mantelshelf. "There, now," she said with a sigh of relief, "I can see your face. It is dreadful to speak to any one in the dark. Uncle Jasper, if I had so near a relation living all these years why was I never told of it? I have over and over again longed for a sister, and it seems I had one or one who might have been to me a sister. Why was I kept in ignorance of her very existence?" "You are like all women--unreasonable, Lottie. I am glad to find you so human, my dear; so human, and--and--womanly. You jump to conclusions without hearing reasons. Now I will give you the reasons. But I do wish you would sit down." "I will sit here," said Charlotte, and she drew a chair near the table. The room abounded in easy-chairs of all sizes and descriptions, but she chose one hard and made of cane, and she sat upright upon it, her hands folded on her lap. "Now, Uncle Jasper," she said, "I am ready to hear your reasons."