If she and Jaquelina were afraid they were to take the child and go to a neighbor's to spend the night. Mrs. Meredith laughed at the idea of fear. So did Jaquelina. Both felt perfectly safe in the quiet, peaceful little farm-house. They sent word that they would remain at home. At eight o'clock Mrs. Meredith, according to her usual custom, retired to bed with her child. Jaquelina took a lamp and went to her own room, but not to sleep. It was too early. The night hours were golden ones to her. Then she was free to read or study as she liked. True, her aunt grumbled over the useless waste of a light, but her Uncle Charlie was wont to interfere so decidedly on that point that the orphan girl had her way. But to-night the book was laid on the shelf of the little garret-chamber, and the girl dragged out a little cedar chest from under the high-posted bed. She unlocked it and took out the dress she had told Violet she would wear to the lawn-party--her mother's wedding-dress. Jaquelina shook out the cedar-scented folds of the dress and spread it out on the bed to look at. It was a fine, soft India muslin, trimmed with a good deal of fine, pretty lace and bows of satin ribbon--all of which had turned very yellow in the years while it lay folded in the cedar chest. It was made in a quaint, pretty style, too; but Jaquelina looked at it doubtfully. She did not know enough of dry goods to know that the garment was made of the finest materials, and was costly as well as pretty. She thought of Violet's crisp, fresh costumes, and the limp India muslin suffered in her guileless mind by the contrast. She actually brought out her Sunday calico, with its fine pink dots and two frills on the skirt, and laid it beside the India muslin, anxiously comparing them. "The calico is the fresher-looking, certainly," she said, turning her pretty head sidewise in bird-like fashion, and eyeing the dresses thoughtfully, "but I am quite sure, from the way Violet looked, she would not like for me to wear _that_. Mamma's dress is very pretty, if only it were not so limp. I should not dare try to starch it, though. I might make it look worse." Then she took a little box from the chest and opened it. It contained her dead mother's little store of jewelry. There were two or three simple rings, a thin gold chain with a locket that held her father's and mother's pictures. She fastened the chain around her neck and slipped one of the rings--the prettiest one--on her finger. "I will wear these to the lawn-party," she said to herself. "The ring is very nice--it has such a pretty, shining stone!" It was a pretty ring, as she said, but Jaquelina, brought up so ignorantly in the lonely farm-house, did not know that the shining little stone was a real diamond. Charlie Meredith and his hard wife did not know it either. They all thought it was a bright, pretty bit of glass. There was a motto cut deeply inside the ring over which Jaquelina had often puzzled.