Ernest, taking what Kate had said in good part, pondered over it as he walked homeward. The afternoon was drawing to a close. Long afterward he recalled that walk among the flower-beds, glowing with tulips and hyacinths, with the last rays of the sun reflected from the little fountain, while the chimes from the church on the corner above rang out "Old Hundred." As he left the Garden and entered Charles Street all this cheerfulness was at an end. The houses cast shadows so heavy in the narrow street that he felt as if in another world. Somewhat depressed, he went up the hill to his aunt's house. From the parlor came the unwonted sound of music. Some one was playing on the old piano. There sat Miss Theodora. He saw her through a half-opened door, playing with a fervor that he could not have believed possible had he not seen it for himself. For a moment he watched her, and although he was not a learned young man, he thought at once of St. Cecilia. There was, indeed, more than a mere suggestion of saintliness in Miss Theodora, with her pale face, with her black hair smoothly brushed away and gathered in a coil behind, and her patient expression. "Why, Aunt Teddy," at length exclaimed Ernest, entering the room, "I didn't know that you were such a performer. I knew you could play, but I didn't know you could play like that." "Thank you, Ernest," replied his aunt. "I don't play well now, but when your grandfather was living I had the very best instruction; but my style is so old-fashioned that I never play to any one now." In truth, Miss Theodora had played well in her day, and it was one of the sorrows of her later life that she could not profit by the fine teachers and the concerts of music-loving Boston. Diantha, whose thirty years' devotion to the family gave her privileges, would sometimes come to her as she sat alone by the front window, in the twilight, and say: "Why don't you never play no music now, Miss Theodora? I ain't forgot how you used to practice all the time; and Mr. John and Mr. William would come into the parlor in the evenings and listen to you, and you used to look so pretty sitting at that very piano that you won't never touch now." Yet Ernest, although he had often heard Diantha thus remonstrate with his aunt, now first realized perhaps that there was undue self-denial in his aunt's life. What Kate had said about "sacrifices" became significant to him. With as little delay as possible he would talk with Richard Somerset. [Illustration] XIV. "Now, Ernest, I don't know what Theodora would do if she knew that I had told you, but since you insist I will say that your father left you nothing, absolutely nothing. He invested his small share of your grandfather's property badly, and when we came to settle things there wasn't a cent for you." So said Richard Somerset in the interview which Ernest soon sought. "So all that I have is just that much less for Aunt Teddy?"