No. 15, Seaton Crescent, Toronto, was a students' boarding-house. Mrs. Dalley, the landlady, declared every day of the university term that they were the hardest set going for a body to put up with. Nevertheless, being near the college buildings, she put up with them, both going and coming, and No. 15 was always full. A short street was Seaton Crescent proper, running between a broad park which bordered the college campus, and a big business thoroughfare. At one end street-cars whizzed up and down with clanging bells, and crowds of busy shoppers hurried to and fro; at the other end spread the green stretches of a park, and farther over stood the stately university. buildings. A street of student boarding-houses it was, and No. 15 stood midway between the clanging and the culture. But Seaton Crescent presented much more than a double row of boarding-houses. Passing out of its narrow confines, it curved round one side of the park bordered by a grand row of elms. Here the houses were mansions, set back in fine old gardens that had smiled there many a summer before the boarding-houses were built. The last house in the row, Crescent Court, was of a newer date. It was a pretentious apartment house, set up on the corner commanding a view of the campus and the park. Just far enough removed from the boarding-house region was Crescent Court to be quite beyond the noise of the street-cars and the shoppers, and consequently its inmates felt themselves far removed from the work-a-day world. In one of its front rooms, a little rose-shaded boudoir, luxuriously furnished, sat a lady. She had been handsome once, but her face now bore the marks of age--not the beautiful lines of years gracefully accepted, but the scars of a long battle against their advance. She wore a gay flowered dressing-gown much too youthful in style, her slippered toes were stretched out to the crackling fire, and a cup of fragrant tea was in her hand. Her cosy surroundings did not seem to contribute much to her comfort, however, for her face had a look of settled melancholy, and she glanced up frowningly at a girl standing by the window. "I sometimes think you are growing positively frivolous, Beth," she complained. "I don't understand you, in view of the strict religious training both your aunt and I have given you. When I was your age, all church-work appealed strongly to me."