Charlotte is just now the successful leader of an English opera-bouffe company which is travelling in the West. She gave the proceeds of her benefit in every town to the poor last winter, which was supposed by all respectable people to be an advertising trick. But it was not. The little woman would do more than that to buy herself an entrance into the heaven where her boy is going. She would do anything, in fact, but lead a decent life. Miss Fleming is still in Rome. She belongs to the modern school which regards the nice reproduction of drapery and dry goods as the highest art. She sends home pictures, which sometimes gain a place by sufferance in a dark corner at the spring exhibition. Mr. Neckart once bought one, a _Lady's Toilette_. "A fair specimen of the millinery cult," he said, showing it to Judge Rhodes, "Poor Cornelia! Why is it that she never, even by chance, paints a clean-minded woman?" He sent a cheque for double the price asked for it. But he threw the picture on the market again, not wishing to take it home. He had married a singularly clean-minded woman. Cornelia's first impulse was to send the cheque back. But, instead, she bought a ring with a single costly ruby in it, and has worn it ever since, though she has been hungry for bread many a time. Hungry or not, she makes her studio one of the pleasantest resorts for the young artists in Rome. She has cut her hair short, wears a jaunty velvet coat and man's collar: her arms are bony, but she bares them, and still shoots languishing glances from out of the crowsfeet. The young men laugh to each other. "A good fellow, Corny," they say, "but what a pity that she is not a man!" The Home for Friendless Children is at last a reality in New York, though Van Ness is not a director. It was established by the editor Neckart, whose wife, it is said, endowed it with her own fortune. This charitable deed left them with but a very moderate competency. Neckart managed to buy in the Hemlock Farm, out of his income, for her and the boy. He drives them over once a week to see the children in the Home, each of whom Jane knows and tries to spoil. "You are glad that we made this act of reparation, Jane?" he said to her one day. "Reparation?" She hesitated, and then said, "I know that I made many mistakes when I was a law to myself. You are my law now, Bruce." "But you are satisfied that it was right to give back the money?" he insisted. "Oh, of course! The money was unlucky! It made you uncomfortable too. And I look on it as a free gift from Swendon here to the poor little babies," taking her boy on her knee and stroking his curls. "But," she added in a low voice, "the money was mine. I was quite right when I burned the will."