"Never," Grace answered, wondering. "He was courteously polite, deferentially chivalrous to all, but seemed attached to none in particular. Why do you ask?" "Because I found this--I would show it to none but you, Grace--on his poor dead heart. It tells its own sad story." She put into the young girl's hand a broad, flat gold locket, swinging by a slight gold chain. Almost as if she touched a coffin-lid, Grace moved the spring. It flew open. No woman's pictured face smiled back at her--the upper lid had a deeply cut inscription, _February_, 1871--in the other deeper side lay a dead white rose, its short, thorny stem wound about with a tangle of pale-gold hair. That was all. A sudden memory stirred at Grace's heart, and it all came back to her. The winter morning in her conservatory at Norfolk--the white rose on her breast, the tangled, broken curl, the gentle good-by. Warm flushes of irrepressible color surged up to her pale face, and with a sudden shocked horror Mrs. Clendenon glanced from the stem of the withered rose to the soft curls she was mechanically smoothing. It was enough. "My poor boy!" she murmured and taking Grace Winans in her tender, forgiving, motherly arms, kissed her forehead. And the tie between the two women never grew less close and warm. The still form they carried home to Norfolk to lay in its grave was a mutual sorrowful tie between them forever. Stella De Vere came next day, heavily vailed, on her father's arm, and kissed Captain Clendenon in his coffin, leaving a bouquet of lilies on his pulseless breast. But at early morning's dawn a slender, white-robed form bent over him, all her golden tresses sweeping over the heart that lay under its treasured keepsake still, and a sister's pained and tender kiss rested warmly on the sealed lips whose untold secret had come so strangely into her keeping. CHAPTER XXX. "BABY FINGERS, WAXEN TOUCHES." "My heart grew softer as I gazed upon That youthful mother as she soothed to rest, With a low song, her loved and cherished one, The bud of promise on her gentle breast; For 'tis a sight that angel ones above May stoop to gaze on from their bowers of bliss, When Innocence upon the breast of Love Is cradled in a sinful world like this." --AMELIA B. WELBY. The telegraphic message that flashed across the ocean to Lulu Conway with such mournful tidings never reached her; she was already on the ocean, homeward bound, having just received the letter that told of Willard's illness at Memphis. It was not until she reached home in May, and was safely domiciled at Ocean View, that Bruce went into Norfolk and brought back the sad-faced mother, whose mourning weeds were the first indication to Lulu of her bitter bereavement.