finished with a deep drawn sigh.

This woman had loved Travilla—all unsuspected by him, for he was not a conceited man—and there had been a time when she would have almost given her hopes of heaven for a return of her affection.

"Is it my mother you mean? did you know her when she was a little girl?" asked Elsie, rising and drawing near the woman's chair.

"Yes; if she was Elsie Dinsmore, and lived at Roselands—how many years ago? let me see; it was a good many; long before I was married to John Gibson."

"That was mamma's name and that was where she lived; with her grandpa, while her papa was away in Europe so many years," returned the little Elsie; then asked with eager interest, "But how did you happen to know her? did you live near Roselands?"

"I lived there; but I was a person of no consequence; only a poor governess," remarked the woman in a bitter tone; an expression of angry discontent settling down upon her features.

"Are you Miss Day?" asked Elsie, retreating a step or two with a look as if she had seen a serpent.

Her mother had seldom mentioned Miss Day to her, but from her Aunts Adelaide and Lora she had heard of her many acts of cruelty and injustice to the little motherless girl committed to her care.

"I was Miss Day; I'm Mrs. Gibson now. I was a little hard on your mother sometimes, as I see you've been told; but I'd a great deal to bear; for they were a proud, haughty family—those Dinsmores. I was not treated as one of themselves, but as a sort of upper servant, though a lady by birth, breeding and education," the woman remarked, her tone growing more and more bitter as she proceeded.

"But was it right? was it just and generous to vent your anger upon a poor little innocent girl who had no mother and no father there to defend her?" asked the child, her soft eyes rilling with tears.

"Well maybe not; but it's the way people generally do. Your mother was a good little thing, provokingly good sometimes; pretty too, and heiress, they said, to an immense fortune. Is she rich still? or did she lose it all by the war?"

"She did not lose it all, I know," said Elsie, "but how rich she is I do not know; mamma and papa seldom talk of any but the true riches."

"Just like her, 

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