Time drags wearily with the heavy-hearted, and all too quickly speeds with the gay. To Mr. Thorpe’s quiet home it has brought no sudden transformation. The head of the house has gone on in his matter-of-fact way, adding, year by year, to his well-filled coffers, until he has come to be acknowledged in business parlance, “one of the heaviest men of the town,” which is quite as true literally. Mrs. Thorpe, the matron, is as charming and pretty as the Mrs. Thorpe of earlier years; while March has grown from babyhood past childhood into dawning womanhood, the pet and idol of the home. No clue has ever been given as to her mysterious advent among them; no trace of the unknown woman who, solitary and alone, traversed the deserted streets on that wild March night. Incredulous people have long since ceased to regard this phase of the night’s experience. For how could any strange person, and a woman, go in and out among them, without the fact being noted and commented upon by some of the news-mongers. An utterly impracticable story! Thus the matter has been satisfactorily settled to their minds. And even Mr. Thorpe, from puzzling over the perplexing question so long, has been inclined to doubt its reality, and has even allowed himself to think that possibly it might have been a sort of optical illusion; or, more improbable still, an unreal presence from the shadowy land, supposed to be inhabited by the guardian attendants of finite creatures, and conditions. But be that as it may, he has somehow during these years fallen a victim to the strange lovableness and fascinating wiles of his adopted daughter; and has grown fonder of her than he would be willing to acknowledge. A rare, beautiful creature she certainly has become, with a dusky, richly colored style of beauty quite unknown among the passionless, phlegmatic people of our sturdy north. A form, slight, childlike, with a peculiar undulating grace of movement, a complexion brown as the nuts of our own forests, yet crimson as the reddest rose; wavy masses of ebon hair, catching odd gleams in the sunlight, blue-black and purplish like a raven’s wing, eyes capable of wonderful transitions, now full of joy, laughter, and sunshine, now flashing scorn and defiance, or heavy with midnight gloom. A strange child, full of wild vagaries and incontrolable impulses. Mrs. Thorpe could no more understand her nature or check her fierce impetuosity, than she could with her weak hands stay the torrent of the mountain stream, or control the headlong speed of the wind, as it eddies and whirls in its mad dance. And so, unchecked and unrestrained, March has entered upon her regal, imperious womanhood.