Alice was used to her mother's ways--her brilliancy--her pointed manner of going at things--her quick change of thought--of mood, and even of temperament. An outsider would have judged Mrs. Westmore to be fickle with a strong vein of selfishness and even of egotism. Alice only knew that she was her mother; who had suffered much; who had been reduced by poverty to a condition straitened even to hardships. To help her the daughter knew that she was willing to make any sacrifice. Unselfish, devoted, clear as noonday in her own ideas of right and wrong, Alice's one weakness was her blind devotion to those she loved. A weakness beautiful and even magnificent, since it might mean a sacrifice of her heart for another. The woman who gives her time, her money, her life, even, to another gives but a small part of her real self. But there is something truly heroic when she throws in her heart also. For when a woman has given that she has given all; and because she has thrown it in cold and dead--a lifeless thing--matters not; in the poignancy of the giving it is gone from her forever and she may not recall it even with the opportunity of bringing it back to life. She who gives her all, but keeps her heart, is as a priest reading mechanically the Sermon on the Mount from the Bible. But she who gives her heart never to take it back again gives as the Christ dying on the Cross. "Now, here is the legal paper about"-- Her voice failed and she did not finish the sentence. Alice took the paper and glanced at it. She flushed and thrust it into her pocket. They were silent a while and Mrs. Westmore sat thinking of the past. Alice knew it by the great reminiscent light which gleamed in her eyes. She thought of the time when she had servants, money, friends unlimited--of the wealth and influence of her husband--of the glory of Westmoreland. Every one has some secret ambition kept from the eyes of every living soul--often even to die in its keeper's breast. It is oftenest a mean ambition of which one is ashamed and so hides it from the world. It is often the one weakness. Alice never knew what was her mother's. She did not indeed know that she had one, for this one thing Mrs. Westmore had kept inviolately secret. But in her heart there had always rankled a secret jealousy when she thought of The Gaffs. It had been there since she could remember--a feeling cherished secretly, too, by her husband: for in everything their one idea had been that Westmoreland should surpass The Gaffs,--that it should be handsomer, better kept, more prosperous, more famous. Now, Westmoreland was gone--this meant the last of it. It would be sold, even the last hundred acres of it, with the old home on it. Gone--gone--all her former glory--all her family tradition, her memories, her very name. Gone, and The Gaffs remained!