face as I have, and your hair is as brown as ever. Mine would be white if I lived here instead of in New York. And the calmness of your eyes, and your smile! Tell me, Mary, tell me now honestly,—I shall sympathize with you,—is it the calmness of despair?"

Mary Sidney did not smile. She looked into the depths of the fire and her guest wondered what memories were unfolding themselves to her rapt vision.

"No," she answered simply at last, "such calmness as I possess is not of despair, but of—faith." The speaker paused before the utterance of the last word as if hesitating for the one which should best express her meaning.

"Do you mean something religious?" asked Mrs. Fabian stiffly.

The stiffness was not disapproval. It was owing to the divided attention she was bestow[6]ing upon the storm, lest if she took her mind off the wind it might seize the advantage and hurl the cabin from its moorings.

[6]

"I should think a person would have to be religious here," she went on. "You must be reduced—simply reduced to trusting in Providence!"

Mary Sidney smiled at the fire. "I didn't have a trusting disposition. I didn't have even a happy disposition, as you evidently remember."

"Well," returned Isabel, "it wasn't a bad one: I didn't imply anything like that; but you were one of the spoiled-beauty sort of girls, not a bit cut out for hardship," the speaker looked judicially at the once familiar face, softened from its old brilliancy. "What an advantage it is to have beautiful eyes!" she added bluntly. "They don't desert you when other things go;—not that it matters a bit what sort of eyes a woman has, living the life you have."

"Oh, Allan thinks it does," returned Mary in her restful manner.

"Does he appreciate you?" Mrs. Fabian asked the question almost angrily.

Mrs. Sidney smiled. "We don't talk much about that, but we're better companions, hap[7]pier, dearer, than we were twenty-five years ago."

[7]

Her cousin gazed curiously. "Then it did turn out all right. You've written so little to your friends. How could your relatives tell?"

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