“Yes,” replied the young man. “I was but four years old when I last beheld the face of the beautiful woman who visited me at intervals, and whom I had been taught to call my aunt. But this last occasion was fixed in my memory from the childish delight I found in the hobby-horse she had brought down for me, and also by something very opposite that—my distress at seeing her great griefs and paroxysms of sobs and tears at leaving me. These impressed the lady’s face and voice indelibly on my memory, so that the image and the tone survived everything else in my picture of the past. I was ten years old when I first saw ‘Mrs. Force’ at our school examination, but her face and her voice troubled me with fancies that they had both once been familiar and beloved. Mother! I remembered your presence in the home of my infancy, though I remembered little else about it; and I recalled your face and voice when I met you again six years later on this other side of the world, though I could not identify you with the angel of my fancy. Yet I always loved you in both characters, though I never ventured to show my affection; and I somehow perceived your love for me, though you never showed it!” “A veil was between us,” said Elfrida Force. “Yes, a veil; but so thin that we saw each other through it. Why, mother, dear, even our little Rosemary perceived this, for she often told me that she believed you loved her for my sake more than for her own. To-day she told me that when she was in distress on my account, it was only to you she could go for sympathy.” “And that was true,” murmured the lady. “And, mother, dear, what treasures I have realized in my new-found sisters. Odalite—always kind to me because Leonidas loved me—Odalite has been most affectionate to-day. Wynnette—charming Wynnette—has been so openly fond of me as to rouse the jealousy of Mr. Samuel Grandiere, who remonstrated in elegant style this way: ‘Drot it all, Wynnette! You make more of Roland than you ever did of me, though I am to be your husband.’” “And what did our Wynnette say to that?” inquired Mrs. Force, with a smile. “She answered: ‘Well? It is written that a man shall forsake his father and his mother and cleave to his wife; but it is nowhere written that a woman shall forsake her darling brother to cleave to another fellow.’ And she hugged me tighter and kissed me closer than before.” “And little Elva?” inquired the lady. “Sweet Elva! Tender, loving Elva! She could not ever have been sweeter, kinder, tenderer to me than she has always been. Elva is the sweetest of all my sweet sisters.” “She is a dear child,” breathed the lady. Then, after a little pause—“And Rosemary?” she inquired.