Miss Arabella's cheeks were growing pale. "Yes, I'd better tell you. I'll have to if I--I leave it to you. Run out an' lock the door, Elsie--the back door, too, and bring Polly in. Somebody might come in an' see it." Elsie obeyed, with a feeling of growing apprehension. She had evidently stirred up depths of which she had never dreamed. When she returned the invalid was half sitting up in bed, flushed with excitement. She pointed to the gay Red Riding-Hood upon the dresser. "There's a key behind her, just inside the wolf," she whispered. "It unlocks that bottom drawer, an' you hand me out what's there." Elsie opened the drawer and took out a large parcel, done up in brown paper. Miss Arabella took it tenderly, and for a few moments lay smoothing it gently. Then, slowly and tremblingly, she untied the string and let a billow of sky-blue silk roll out upon the bed. Elsie gave a little exclamation of admiration. "Oh, Arabella, what a lovely thing! It looks as though it had been intended for an old-fashioned wedding dress." "That's just what it was for," whispered Arabella, with drooping head. The girl looked at her for a moment, and then, with a woman's intuition, she divined the secret. She sank upon her knees again and put her arms about the shrinking little figure. "Yours, Arabella?" she whispered. "Was it intended for you?" Miss Arabella nodded. Her head went down on her friend's shoulder. The girl patted her lovingly, as though she had been a hurt child. "There, there, dear," she said soothingly, "tell me all about it. I won't tell, you know I won't." "Do you promise, sure and certain, Elsie?" came the frightened whisper. "Yes, sure and certain." "I don't think I could stand it if Susan an' Bella were to know. Even after I'm gone I'd like it kept a secret. I guess I'm foolish, an' Susan says there's no fool like an old fool, but I jist can't help it." She lay back again on her pillow, her thin fingers passing caressingly up and down the shining folds of silk. She was silent for some minutes, and at last, with much halting, she began the story of the blue silk gown. She told in a shy whisper of the lover of her girlhood days. She had met him a long time ago, while on a visit to an aunt, away over in Bruce County. He was foreman in the mill there, and he was--well, she couldn't exactly tell what he was like, he was so awful nice. Through the sentences Elsie Cameron could make out a picture of him: big, handsome, honest, whole-hearted, and as tender as a woman with his shy little sweetheart; but in Miss Arabella's worshiping eyes he was a very demigod.