A burst of wild weeping, tears falling like rain, bitter choking sobs following thick and fast upon each other, then a great calm; an effort at first feeble, but growing stronger by degrees, to roll the burden too heavy for her upon One able and willing to bear it, a soothing, comforting remembrance of His promise never to leave nor forsake, and anon the glad thought that she whose love was only second to His might yet be found. “She may be near, very near me even now,” whispered the girl to herself, “in this city, this street, but a few doors away; it may be for that I have been sent here. Oh, what a thought! what joy if we should meet! But would we recognize each other? Mother, oh, mother! should I know your face if I saw it?” She rose, tottered to the glass over the bureau, and earnestly scanned her own features. With a half-smile she noted their worn and haggard look. Grief, care, and fatigue seemed to have done the work of years. “It is well,” she said. “I think I know now how she looks--my own poor, weary, heart-broken mother!” Mrs. Kemper had told Floy that, allowing for difference in age, health, and circumstances, she was in face and form almost the exact counterpart of her own mother, and this was not the first time that the girl had earnestly studied her own face, trying to anticipate the changes to be wrought in it by the wear and tear of the next eighteen or twenty years, that thus she might be ready to know at a glance that other one she so longed to look upon. She turned from the glass with a long, weary sigh, took off her dusty dress, shook out her abundant tresses, donned a wrapper, crept into the bed that had been pointed out as hers, and when Patsy came up an hour later to tidy the room, was sunk in a slumber so profound that she knew of neither the coming nor going of the child. She was roused at last by a slight shake and the voice of the little maid. “Miss, miss, they’re a-settin’ down to the table; don’t ye want some dinner? Miss Hetty she told me to ax ye.” “Thank you!” cried Floy, starting up. “Yes, I’ll be down in a moment; I’d no thought of sleeping so long!” It was the work of a very few minutes to gather up her hair into a massive coil at the back of her head and put on one of her simply-made but becoming mourning dresses. She entered the dining-room with a quaking heart, not knowing what severe looks or reproaches might be meted out to her unpunctuality. Patsy’s report had been, however, not quite correct, and she was but a moment behind the others. They were the same party she had met at breakfast, with the addition of a middle-aged, cadaverous-visaged man with a perpetual frown on his brow and a fretful expression about the mouth, who, as she entered, was in the act of carving a leg of mutton. He honored our heroine with a stare which she felt like resenting. “Miss Kemper, Uncle Thorne,” said Hetty. “Ah, how d’ye do, miss? Will you be helped to a bit of a poor man?”