Once more the Institute holidays began. Lucy had now made arrangements for continuing her services there into the next year, under a running “quarter’s notice.” She had in readiness all her little gala preparations with which to greet Charlie’s return, however unexpected it might happen to be. Of late she had seen very little of the Brands. She knew that Jem had made a great success in some of his speculations. In newspapers she saw that his name was held in prominent place at “financial” meetings, and she noticed mention of Florence as among the guests at showy social functions. Taking up a “society paper” by chance, she actually read an account of her sister’s toilette! To Lucy’s ideas, such a thing was an indecent intrusion into the affairs of a private lady. When Florence called on her, elate over all these things, she could not congratulate her, and Lucy felt that her simple silence chafed Florence. Even as the boy-boarder, poor Tom, “degraded” Lucy in Florence’s eyes, so, from Lucy’s standpoint, these vanities degraded Florence. The sisters were drifting ever further apart. Lives with aims and aspirations diametrically opposed cannot keep together, however household love and the memory of old associations may yearn that they should do so. Nay, the more these struggle against the separating tide, the more ghastly is their shipwreck likely to be. There is “a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.” The most poignant tragedy of life comes in just here. For whatever love has ever been, will persist, and has to learn to rest patient in the faith that “God seeketh again that which is passed away.” Christmas morning came. Miss Latimer had her Christmas offering of daintily hemmed net ruffles, just the sort of thing which Lucy had now no time to make. There was the usual budget of Christmas letters and parcels. A book for Hugh, from “his father’s friend Wilfrid Somerset,” sent by post, because Mr. Somerset knew that a “post parcel for his very self” would bulk so largely in a child’s delight; and a magnificent hand-painted glove and handkerchief sachet in white satin from Jem and Florence. What significance there was in those gifts! Miss Latimer and Mr. Somerset gave with theirs a wee bit of themselves, the kind consideration for a tired woman’s inability to serve herself, and for the eager vanity of a little child. But that costly and delicate sachet could have had no proper place in the little house with the verandah at any time, and certainly could have no function in the life of a working woman-artist, who bought no gloves but dark “suedes,” and who could scarcely find time or spare energy to dust her books! Lucy expressed a desperate admiration of the thing’s delicate beauty, and so did Miss Latimer. There was nothing else to say. Each knew the other was not deceived as to her estimate of the thoughtlessness of such a gift.