“Mother knew where father was for a time and sent him a copy of the divorce. He replied, ‘I congratulate you on your freedom. You will not have any trouble in filling my place. You are young enough and handsome enough to have twenty-two more offers. Jeff and I are off for the mines in Montana. Tell the baby, when she is old enough to understand, that, bad as I was, I loved her. Mark Hilton.’ “I was ill with diphtheria when mother received the note,—so ill that the papers, when commenting on the divorce, said that I was dead. Six months later mother saw an account of a terrible accident in some mines in Montana. In the list of killed was my father’s name, but there was no mention of Jeff. Mother tried to learn the particulars, but could not, and after a while she came back to New York deserted, divorced and widowed, but still very beautiful. We lived with grandma, a proud old lady, who had never received my father. She is dead now and I do not remember her. Among mother’s friends was Judge Prescott, whom she used to know, and who, I think, wanted her before she married my father. When I was two and a half years old she married him and at his request I took his name. I was christened Frances, but he did not like that name and I was called Fanny to please him. I like it better than Frances, don’t you?” Roy would have liked any name which belonged to her and said so, while she continued: “You were in Europe when all this happened and knew nothing about it as you are not much older than I am.” “Two years,” Roy said, kissing her again, while she tried to disengage herself from him, but could not, for a lock of her hair had become frightfully entangled in a button of his coat. It took some time to disentangle it and Fanny was obliged to lie quietly upon Roy’s arm, with her face upturned to him so temptingly that not to kiss it occasionally was impossible for one of his temperament. “Roy Mason!” she exclaimed, “You must not kiss and squeeze me the way you are doing, and I not able to get away, with my hair all snarled up in your buttons. It is mean in you, and I’ll call mother if you don’t stop. I believe she is in the next room, listening, perhaps.” “Let her listen. She was young once,” Roy said, going on very deliberately, while Fanny, from necessity, lay passive on his arm. When the hair business was settled she moved away from him, and picking up a cushion put it between them again.