"No," Dolly answered slowly. "I should not. It may be--impossible as it now seems--that one of your children, or even you yourself, Leonora, might hereafter stand in need of such comfort as I could give; and just as surely as I take your present to-night, I will return your goodness then. In the words of The Book, 'May God do so to me and more if ever for ever I forget you and yours.'" "Thank you, Dolly, it is a good vow for Christmas Eve. Good-bye dear, do not come out with me." For reply, Dolly folding a shawl around her walked along the Grove and to the cross road where Mr. Werner's carriage was waiting. "You ought not to be out in this damp night air," said Mrs. Werner. But Dolly only shook her head. The footman banged the door, the coachman touched his horses, Mrs. Werner put down the window and waved her hand, and Dolly returned to the small house all alone. There, expecting perhaps to find a ten-pound note in the silken folds of the new purse, she opened Mrs. Werner's present; but, behold! it was no bank-note which her fingers discovered, but a slip of paper on which was written, "Pay to Mrs. Werner or order one hundred pounds," and on the back a signature, that of "Leonora Werner." CHAPTER III. WHAT MR. LANG THOUGHT. As Mrs. Werner drove home a cruel pain seemed tearing her heart to pieces. She had loved Dolly as child, as girl, as woman, with a love almost equalling that of a mother. She had longed for Dolly to be different, desired to see her grasp life with a firmer hand, and learn the lessons taught by experience as something more real than an idle jest. Dolly's frivolity had chafed her spirit even in the old Dassell days, but it had vexed her more since the time of her own marriage. If she regarded the journey of existence as a serious affair, what right had Mr. Gerace's daughter to comport herself along the way as though she were but one of a picnic party, as though it were always first of May and fine weather with her? Life should have been just as momentous a business at Homewood as at the West-End, where Henry Werner had set up his domestic gods; but Dolly could never be brought to see the iniquity of her own light-heartedness; and Mrs. Werner, who frequently found the hours and the days pass heavily enough in the ponderous atmosphere of respectability which her husband affected, could often have found it in her heart to box Dolly's ears for her levity of deportment and lightness of heart. And now Dolly was serious enough, and yet Mrs. Werner felt dissatisfied--more than dissatisfied. She was in despair; the ideal Dolly she had always regarded as possible if not probable; but the frivolous, light-hearted, smiling Dolly she had foolishly desired to change, could never come back with her gay tones, with her laughing face, on this side Heaven.