“Thank you—I wish I could.” There was a penetrative, lingering flash of those still quizzical eyes at Dosia as he made his adieus, and then he was gone. Why should she feel alone? Her cousin’s arms were at last around her in welcome, the warmer for being deferred; and the little Zaidee, whom she would have known from Justin’s description of her, was standing first on one tiptoe and then on the other, waiting to be kissed before going off to bed, as she announced. From above came the sound of small running feet, and a child’s voice calling: “Cousin Dosia—I want to see my Cousin Dosia!” A bare foot and leg surmounted by a fluttering scrap of white raiment was thrust through the balusters, followed by a protesting scream as his nurse heavily pursued the fugitive with upraised voice: “Coom back, Reginald, coom back!” There was the noise of a scuffle as Dosia, with her escort, laughingly ascended the stairs, to elicit a shriek of terror and a rear view of the mercurial Reginald in full flight for the nursery door, which banged after him, and behind which he still raised his voice, to the shrill accompaniment of the nurse. “_I’ll_ go in and keep him quiet,” said Zaidee reassuringly, in answer to her mother’s look of appeal, and she also disappeared beyond the prison bars, after a whisk of her short crisp pink skirt, and a smile at Dosia in which her little white teeth gleamed in an infantile glee that only accentuated her air of preternatural capability. Her cousin’s kindly hands helped Dosia to remove the traces of travel, when she had definitely refused the offer pressed upon her to be undressed and go to bed and have her dinner brought up to her. It was sweet to be in feminine care once more, and be pitied for the terrors she had undergone, and feel the bond of relationship assert itself in spite of the fact that the cousins had not seen each other since Dosia’s early childhood. She did not want to be alone up-stairs, and sat instead in Justin’s place at the table, clad in a soft silken tea-gown of Lois’ that was in itself restful, trying to eat and drink and keep up her part in the conversation about her journey and the absent members of the family. Changes had crowded so upon poor Dosia that she felt as if she were living in a kaleidoscope that rattled her every minute or two into a new position; the glittering table and her cousin’s form would presently dissolve, and leave her perhaps out in the crowded, unknown streets, with wild-eyed faces pressing near her.