“It is so kind in you, Roy, not to care about that hanging,” she said. “I have felt the rope around my neck so many times and have dreamed that I was ’Tina. I must look like her. She was blue eyed and fair-haired and small, just like me, who am not a bit like mother. Her grave is in the Ridgefield cemetery, ’Tina’s I mean, and mother sat there on the wall right by it when father told her the story. He didn’t keep anything back, and held his head just as high when he said, ‘My great-grandmother was hung.’ His grandfather was the baby who cried for its mother. I’ve heard that, too, when I have been awake in the night and been so sorry for it. Mother says my father was very tall and fine looking, and that I have some of his ways with my eyes and hands. I have dreamed of him so often since she told me, and sometimes it seems to me he is not dead. There is no proof except that notice in the paper and a letter mother had from the mines saying some of the bodies were so crushed they could not be recognized, and as my father was known to be in the mine and never seen again, it was highly probable he was dead. Oh, if I could find him! I think you’d better hunt for him than to be building a cottage to keep ’Tina from the rain!” She spoke lightly now. Roy evidently didn’t care and the tragedy which had cast so dark a shadow on her life when she heard of it began to lessen in its proportions. “I hear mother,” she said at last. “I thought she was in the next room, but she is a little deaf. I don’t believe she has heard all the foolish things you have said to me. Mother, here is Roy,” she continued, as the heavy portieres parted and her mother stood before her. CHAPTER II. MRS. PRESCOTT. Naturally twenty-three years had changed her somewhat. The freshness and grace of youth were gone, with much of her brilliant complexion. Her dark hair was sprinkled with grey, and her eyes had lost some of the sparkle which had lured so many suitors to her side, but she was a very beautiful woman still, whom strangers looked at a second time, inquiring who she was. She had at first rebelled against wearing widow’s weeds, but when she saw how becoming they were to her she became quite reconciled to her mourning and was beginning to feel reconciled to her widowhood, which gave her the freedom she had not enjoyed since her second marriage. She had paid a full penalty for her heartless act and had repented of her folly. There had been a year of so of perfect happiness with Mark Hilton and then the restraints of married life began to weary her. It had been her boast that because her husband knew her so well he could never find fault with her, and there she was mistaken.