“Thank you very much! Grandmother is well, and happier than any of us. She is so good that even grief seems to make her more and more gentle. I never heard her complain in my life.” “Still, this must have been a terrible blow.” “It was! it was! But she yields—bends; resists nothing that God sees fit to inflict.” “And you?” His voice was full of tender compassion. His eyes brought tears into hers. “I cannot be so good, my heart will ache; my very breath is sometimes painful! Oh, sir! you cannot tell how I loved my father!” “He must have been a superior man,” said Savage, gently; “a very superior man, to have brought up a family so well, under what seems to me great difficulties.” “He was a——” Anna broke down here—tears drowned her voice. “Forgive me! I am cruel to wound you so; but it is not meant unkindly,” said Savage. “I know—I know!” faltered Anna, behind her veil; “but you cannot think how noble he was—what beautiful talent he had. I think Joseph takes after him; he begins to draw pictures even now.” “Was your father an artist, then?” “Yes; a designer on wood. He was just beginning to make himself known. But he could do many things beside that. We all loved him so—and now he is dead!” Anna drew her veil close, and, for a time, the young pair walked on in silence, unconscious of the course they were taking. They were aroused by a carriage dashing past, in which a lady sat alone. She leaned forward, revealing an eager face, surmounted by a bonnet of lilac velvet, with masses of pink roses under the narrow front. The horses moved so rapidly that Savage scarcely recognized the face of Miss Eliza Halstead as she swept by; but Anna saw it clearly, and shrunk within herself. Miss Halstead had recognized Savage with a killing smile on her lips; but when she saw his companion, the smile withered into a sneer, and she seized the checkstring in fierce haste. “Drive round the block again, fast at first, then slower,” she said. The man obeyed, and dashing round the block, came upon the young couple again at a slower pace. Now Miss Eliza leaned out, kissed her hand to Savage, and searched Anna’s face through the veil that shaded it with her vicious eyes. “I thought so—I thought so!” she muttered, biting the fingers of her canary-colored gloves till the delicate kid was torn by her teeth. “It’s that creature, not Georgiana, who stands in my way. Oh! I have made a discovery! It’s her! It’s the same girl that I saw at the fair. Some poor seamstress or sewing-machine operator, or I’m dreadfully mistaken.” The carriage moved slowly on as Eliza registered these convictions in her mind; and before it was out of sight, Savage had forgotten its existence, so deeply was he interested in the conversation of the young girl who walked so modestly by his side—so completely did the feelings of the moment carry him away.