He must bury his face in the grass that grew over her body; must tell her that the parting was, after all, not long; the day very close at hand now when he and she would walk together in the paths of paradise. “I can’t tell the child I’m going to die,” he thought. “And I must find a guardian for her somehow. If I only knew a woman I could trust! God knows the girl must have missed her mother many a day.” He was the last of the Le Marchants’; he had no relations except a married cousin, of whom he had lost sight long ago, and his wife had had no one. People said Cristiane’s mother had been an adventuress; certainly she had left her daughter the legacy only of her own outlandish name, her own wonderful red-gold hair, and a wild will that there was no compelling. Cristiane Luoff her name had been, and Sir Gaspard had married her in Rome. For a year they had been utterly happy--and now he was going to look on her grave for the last time before he died. First, though, he must find some one to leave with Cristiane, and he had no inkling where to turn. Men he knew--but Cristiane was too pretty to leave to any of them; women--he could not think of one! He stared idly across the wide oak writing-table before him, and a neat pile of letters caught his eye. Surely he had seen the writing on that top envelope before--but where! Small, neat, dainty, it lay before his gaze, and he opened it, more to turn his thoughts than because it could have to do with what was in his mind. “Helen Trelane” it was signed, and he wondered no longer why the writing had looked familiar, though it was years since he had seen it. Mrs. Trelane was his only relative, and had married a man of whom report spoke variously as a scoundrel and a martyr. Only reports of the first sort had reached Sir Gaspard. Trelane had long been dead, and, living, had had few friends. One thing was certain, that with him Mrs. Trelane had led a life of precarious poverty, till she had gradually drifted utterly away from the people who had known her as Helen le Marchant. When Trelane drank himself to death--or died of a broken heart, as some people had it--Sir Gaspard had sent a large check to his widow, and she had written more times than were quite necessary to thank him. He had let the correspondence drop, but now he recognized the writing. “My Dear Gaspard,” the letter ran, “I suppose you will be surprised at hearing from one of whom you have heard nothing since your great kindness at a sad time. I would have written had I had anything pleasant to say, but things have not gone well with me and my little girl. “An imprudent man of business--I do not care to write a dishonest one--the education of my child, which cost more than I imagined, and perhaps my own foolish ignorance of money matters, have resulted in my being nearly penniless.