Unfortunately Mrs. Miller was sick, but she welcomed Mildred kindly as Miss Hawley, and talked freely with her of the discovery that had been made. “You will feel better after a time,” she said, as she saw how fast Mildred’s tears came at the mention of Lawrence Thornton. “Your secret is safe with me and my husband, and no one else knows that you ever had claim to another name than Hawley. I am sorry that I am ill just at this time, but I shall be well in a few days, I hope. Meantime you must amuse yourself in any way you choose. I have given orders for you to have the large front chamber looking out upon the village. The room adjoining is occupied by a gentleman who came here yesterday morning, intending to stop for a few days. He is very agreeable, they say, and quite a favorite in the house.” Mildred thought of her companion in the stage, and was about to ask his name, when a servant appeared, offering to show her to her room. It was one of those warm, languid days in early June, and Mildred soon began to feel the effects of her recent excitement and wearisome ride in the racking headache which came on so fast as to prevent her going down to dinner, and at last confined her to the bed, where she lay the entire afternoon, falling away at last into a deep, quiet sleep, from which about sunset she awoke greatly refreshed and almost free from pain. Observing that her door was open, she was wondering who had been there, when her ear caught a sound as of some child breathing heavily, and turning in the direction whence it came, she saw a most beautiful little girl, apparently four or five years old, perched upon a chair near the window, her soft auburn curls falling over her forehead, and her face very red with the exertions she was making to unclasp Mildred’s reticule, which she had found upon the table. As a carriage rolled down the street, she raised her eyes, and to Mildred it seemed as if she were looking once more upon the face which had so often met her view when she brushed her own hair before the cracked glass hanging on the rude walls of the gable-roof. “Is it my other self?” she thought, passing her hand before her eyes to clear away the mist, if mist there was. “Isn’t it I as I used to be?” Just then the snapping apart of the steel clasp, and the child’s satisfied exclamation of “There, I did do it,” convinced her that ’twas not herself as she used to be, but a veritable mass of flesh and blood, embodied in as sweet a face and perfect a form as she ever looked upon. “I will speak to her,” Mildred thought, and involuntarily from her lips the word “_Sister_” came, causing the child to start suddenly and drop the reticule, with which she knew she had been meddling. Shaking back her sunny curls, which now lay in rings about her forehead, and flashing upon Mildred a pair of eyes very much like her own, she said: “How you did _stare_ me! Be you waked up?”