"A letter for you, Mother," Alden tossed a violet-scented envelope into the old lady's lap as he spoke, and stood there, waiting.

"For me!" she exclaimed. Letters for either of them were infrequent. She took it up curiously, scrutinised the address, sniffed at the fragrance the missive carried, noted the postmark, which was that of the town near by, and studied the waxen purple seal, stamped with indistinguishable initials.

"I haven't the faintest idea whom it's from," she said, helplessly.

"Why not open it and see?" he suggested, with kindly sarcasm. His assumed carelessness scarcely veiled his own interest in it.

"You always were a bright boy, Alden," she laughed. Another woman might have torn it open rudely, but Madame searched through her old mahogany desk until she found a tarnished silver letter-opener, thus according due courtesy to her unknown correspondent.

Having opened it, she discovered that she could not read the handwriting, which was angular and involved beyond the power of words to indicate.

"Here," she said. "Your eyes are better than mine."

Alden took it readily. "My eyes may be good," he observed, after a long pause, "but my detective powers are not. The m's and n's are all alike, and so are most of the other letters. She's an economical person—she makes the same hieroglyphic do duty for both a g and a y."

"It's from a woman, then?"

"Certainly. Did you ever know a man to sprawl a note all over two sheets of paper, with nothing to distinguish the end from the beginning? In the nature of things, you'd expect her to commence at the top of a sheet, and, in a careless moment, she may have done so. Let me see—yes, here it is: 'My dear Mrs. Marsh.'"

"Go on, please," begged Madame, after a silence. "It was just beginning to be interesting."

"'During my mother's last illness,'" Alden read, with difficulty, "'she told me that if I were ever in trouble, I should go to you—that you would stand in her place to me. I write to ask if I may come, for I can no longer see the path ahead of me, and much less do I know the way in which I should go.

"'You surely remember her. She was Louise Lane before her marriage to my father, Edward Archer.

"'Please send me a line or two, telling me I may come, if only for a day. Believe me, no woman ever needed a friendly hand to guide her more than

"'Yours unhappily,

"'Edith Archer Lee.'"

"Louise Lane," murmured Madame, reminiscently. "My old schoolmate! I didn't even know that she had a daughter, or that she was dead. How strangely we lose track of one another in this world!"

"Yes?" said Alden, encouragingly.

"Louise was a beautiful girl," continued Madame, half to herself. "She had big brown eyes, with long lashes, a thick, creamy skin that someway reminded you of white rose-petals, and the most glorious red hair you ever saw. She married an actor, and I heard indirectly that she had gone on the stage, then I lost her entirely."

"Yes?" said Alden, again.

"Edith Archer Lee," Madame went on. "She must be married. Think of Louise Lane having a daughter old enough to be married! And yet—my Virginia would have been thirty-two now. Dear me, how the time goes by!"

The tall clock on the landing chimed five deep musical strokes, the canary hopped restlessly about his gilt cage, and the last light of the sweet Spring afternoon, searching the soft shadows of the room, found the crystal ball on the table and made merry with it.

"Time is still going by," Alden reminded her. "What are you going to do?"

Madame started from her reverie. "Do? Why, she must come, of course!"

"I don't see why," Alden objected, gloomily. "I don't like strange women."

"It is not a question of what we like or don't like, my son," she returned, in gentle reproof. "She is in trouble and she needs something we can give her."

"When people are in trouble, they usually want either money or sympathy, or both."

"Sometimes they only need advice."

"There are lots of places where they can get it. Advice is as free as salvation is said to be."

Madame sighed. Then she crossed the room, and put her hands upon his shoulders. "Dear, are you going to be cross?"

His face softened. "Never to you, if I know it, but why should strange women invade the peace of a man's home? Why should a woman who writes like that come here?"

"Don't blame her for her handwriting—she can't help it."

"I don't blame her; far from it. On the contrary, I take off my hat to her. A woman who can take a plain pen, and plain ink, and do such dazzling wonders on plain paper, is entitled to sincere respect, if not admiration."

Smiling, Madame went to her desk, and in a quaint, old-fashioned script, wrote a note to Mrs. Lee. "There," she said, as she sealed it. "I've asked her to come to-morrow on the six o'clock train. I've told her that you will meet her at the station, and that we won't have dinner until half-past seven. That will give her time to rest and dress. If you'll take it to the post-office now, she'll get it in the morning."

Alden shrugged his shoulders good-humouredly, kissed his mother, and went out. He wondered how he would recognise the "strange woman" when she arrived on the morrow, though few people came on the six o'clock train, or, for that matter, on any train.

"Might write her a little note on my own account," he mused. "Ask her to take off her right shoe and hold it in her left hand, or something of that sort. No, that isn't necessary. I'll bet I could go into a crowd of a thousand women and pick out the one who wrote that letter."

The scent of violet still haunted him, but, by the time he had posted his mother's note, he had forgotten all about it and was thinking of Rosemary.

Madame, however, was busy with plans for her guest's comfort. She took down her best hand-embroidered linen sheets, shaking out the lavender that was laid between the folds, selected her finest towels and dresser-covers, ransacked three or four trunks in the attic for an old picture of Louise Lane, found a frame to fit it, laid out fresh curtains, had the shining silver candlesticks cleaned again, and opened wide every window of the long-unused guest-room to give it a night's airing.

Downstairs, she searched through the preserve-closet for dainties to tempt an unhappy woman's appetite, meanwhile rejoicing with housewifely pride in her well-stocked shelves. That evening, while Alden read the paper, she planned a feast for the next night, and mended, with fairy-like stitches, the fichu of real lace that she usually wore with her lavender silk gown.

"Is it a party?" queried Alden, without looking up from his paper.

"Yes. Isn't company a party?"

"That depends. You know three are said to be a crowd."

"Still inhospitable, dear?"

"Only mildly so. I contemplate the approaching evil with resignation, if not content."

"You and I have lived alone so long that we've got ourselves into a rut. Everyone we meet may give us something, and receive something from us in return."

"I perceive," said Alden, irrelevantly, "that the Lady Mother is going to be dressed in her best when the guest arrives."

A pale pink flush mantled the old lady's fair cheeks. At the moment she looked like a faded rose that had somehow preserved its sweetness.

"Why not?" she asked.

"Why do we always do for strangers what we do not willingly do for our own flesh and blood?" he queried, philosophically. "You love me better than anything else in the world, yet you wouldn't put on that lavender gown twice a year, just for me alone. The strange woman may feast her eyes upon it the moment she enters the house. She'll eat from the best china, sleep between embroidered sheets, and, I have no doubt, drink the wine that Father put away the day I was born, to be opened at my wedding."

"Not at your wedding, my son, but the day you found the woman you loved." Then, after a long pause, she added, shyly: "Shouldn't it be opened now?"

"It'll keep," the young man grunted. "After lying for thirty years among the cobwebs, a few more weeks or months or years, as the case may be, won't hurt it. Besides, I don't expect to have any wedding. I'm merely going to be married. Might as well let the strange woman have it."

Alden's father had, as he said, put away on the day he was born all the wine that was then ready to be bottled. The baby girl had been welcomed gladly, especially as she had her mother's eyes, but the day the second Alden Marsh was born, the young father's joy had known no bounds. He had gone, at dusk, to the pale little mother, and, holding her in his arms, had told her about the wine.

"I've put it all away," he had said, "for the boy. He's to open it the day he finds the woman he loves as I love you."

The shelf in the storeroom, where he had placed it, had never been disturbed, though dust and cobwebs lay thickly upon it and Madame had always prided herself upon her immaculate housekeeping. It grieved her inexpressibly because Alden cared so little about it, and had for it, apparently, no sentiment at all. To her it was sacred, like some rare wine laid aside for communion, but, as she reflected, the boy's father had died before he was much more than a child.

"Don't you remember your father at all?" asked Madame, with a sigh.

"I can't say that I do—that is, not before he died." The casket and the gloom of mourning had made its own vivid impression upon the child's sensitive mind. One moment stood out quite clearly, but he forebore to say so. It was when his mother, with the tears raining down her face, had lifted him in her arms and bade him look at the man who lay in the casket, oh, so cold and still.

"Say good-bye to Father, dear," she had sobbed. "Is Father gone away?" he had asked, in childish terror, then she had strained him to her heart, crying out: "Just for a little while! Oh, if I could only believe it was for just a little while!"

The rest had faded into a mist of sadness that, for a long time, had not even begun to lift. When he found his mother in tears, as he often did after that, he went away quietly, knowing that she longed for "Father," who had gone away and never returned. Later, he used to sit on the top step of the big Colonial porch—a fragile little figure—waiting, through the long Summer afternoons, for the father who did not come.

Once, when his mother was so absorbed in her grief that she did not hear him come into the room, he had laid a timid, trembling hand upon her knee, saying: "Mother, if you will tell me where Father is, I will go and bring him back." But, instead of accepting the offer, she had caught him to her breast, sobbing, with a sudden rush of impassioned prayer: "Dear God, no—not that!"

Time, as always, had done his merciful healing, which, though slow, is divinely sure. Madame was smiling, now, at some old memory that had come mysteriously out of the shadow, leaving all bitterness behind. She had finished mending the lace and had laid it aside. Alden took it up, awkwardly, and looked at it.

"This for the strange woman," he said, teasingly, "and plain black or grey silk for me, though I am fain to believe that you love me best. Why is it?"

"Because," she responded, playfully, "you know me and love me, even without fuss and frills. For those who do not know us, we must put our best foot forward, in order to make sure of the attention our real merit deserves."

"But doesn't immediately command—is that it?"

"I suppose so."

"What must I wear to the train—my dress suit?"

"Don't be foolish, son. You'll have plenty of time to dress after you get home."

"Shall I drive, or walk?"

"Take the carriage. She'll be tired. Unhappy women are always tired."

"Are they tired because they're unhappy, or unhappy because they're tired? And do they get unhappier when they get more tired, or do they get more tired when they get unhappier?"

"Don't ask me any more conundrums to-night. I'm going to bed, to get my beauty sleep."

"You must have had a great many, judging by the results."

Madame smiled as she bent to kiss his rough cheek. "Good-night, my dear. Think of some other pleasant things and say them to-morrow night to Mrs. Lee."

"I'll be blest if I will," Alden muttered to himself, as his mother lighted a candle and waved her hand prettily in farewell. "If all the distressed daughters of all mother's old schoolmates are coming here, to cry on her shoulder and flood the whole place with salt water, it's time for me to put up a little tent somewhere and move into it."

By the next day, however, he had forgotten his ill-humour and was at the station fully ten minutes before six o'clock. As it happened, only one woman was among the passengers who left the train at that point.

"Mrs. Lee?" he asked, taking her suit-case from her.

"Yes. Mr. Marsh?"

"Yes. This way, please."

"How did you know me?" she inquired, as she took her place in the worn coupÉ that had been in the Marsh stables for almost twenty years.

"By your handwriting," he laughed, closing the door.

A smile hovered for a moment around the corners of her mouth, then disappeared.

"Then, too," he went on, "as you were the only woman who got off the train, and we were expecting you, I took the liberty of speaking to you."

"Did you ask the man to have my trunk sent up?"

"Trunk!" echoed Alden, helplessly. "Why, no! Was there a trunk?"

She laughed—a little, low rippling laugh that had in it an undertone of sadness. There was a peculiar, throaty quality in her voice, like a muted violin or 'cello. "Don't be so frightened, please, for I'm not going to stay long, really. I'm merely the sort of woman who can't stay over night anywhere without a lot of baggage."

"It—it wasn't that," he murmured.

"Yes, it was. You don't need to tell me polite fibs, you know. How far are we from the house?"

"Not as far," returned Alden, rallying all his forces for one supreme effort of gallantry, "as I wish we were."

She laughed again, began to speak, then relapsed into silence. Furtively, in the gathering shadow, he studied her face. She was pale and cold, the delicate lines of her profile conveyed a certain aloofness of spirit, and her mouth drooped at the corners. Her hat and veil covered her hair, but she had brown eyes with long lashes. Very long lashes, Alden noted, having looked at them a second time to make sure.

The silence became awkward, but he could think of nothing to say. She had turned her face away from him and was looking out of the window. "How lovely the country is," she said, pensively. "I wish sometimes I never had to step on a pavement again."

"Do you have to?" he asked.

"Yes, for I'm over-civilised. Like the god in Greek mythology, I need the touch of earth occasionally to renew my strength, but a very brief contact is all-sufficient. I'm a child of the city, brought up on smoke and noise."

"You don't look it," he said, chiefly because he could think of nothing else to say.

Madame herself opened the door for them, with the old-fashioned hospitality which has an indefinable charm of its own. "How do you do, my dear," she said, taking the hand the younger woman offered her. In the instant of feminine appraisement, she had noted the perfectly tailored black gown, the immaculate shirtwaist and linen collar, and the discerning taste that forbade plumes. The fresh, cool odour of violets persisted all the way up-stairs, as Madame chattered along sociably, eager to put the guest at her ease.

Below, they heard Alden giving orders about the trunk, and Mrs. Lee smiled—a little, wan ghost of a smile that Madame misunderstood.

"You don't need to dress, if you're tired," she suggested, kindly, "though we always do. Come down just as you are."

Mrs. Lee turned to the dainty little woman who stood before her, arrayed in shining lavender silk. The real-lace fichu was fastened at the waist with an amethyst pin and at her throat she wore a string of silver beads. Her white hair was beautifully dressed, and somewhere, among the smooth coils and fluffy softness, one caught the gleam of a filigree silver comb.

"Not dress?" she said. "Indeed I shall, as soon as my trunk comes. That is," she added, hastily, "if there's anyone to hook me up."

"There is," Madame assured her. "I'll leave you now to rest. We dine at half-past seven."

The sweetness of the lavender-scented room brought balm to Edith Lee's tired soul. "How lovely she is," she said to herself, as she noted the many thoughtful provisions for her comfort, "and how good it is to be here."

A silver-framed photograph stood on her dressing-table, and she picked it up, wondering who it might be. The hair and gown were old-fashioned, and the face seemed old-fashioned also, but, in a moment, she had recognised her mother.

Tenderness for the dead and the living filled her heart. How dear it was of Madame to have placed it there—this little young mother, just budding into womanhood! It had been taken long before she had known of Edith, or had more than dreamed of love.

The arrival of the trunk compelled her to brush away a few foolish tears. She did not stop to unpack, but only took out the dinner gown that lay on top.

Promptly at half-past seven, she went down into the living-room, where Alden and his mother were waiting to receive her. Madame smiled with pure delight at the vision that greeted her, but the young man forgot his manners and stared—stared like the veriest schoolboy at the tall, stately figure, clad in shimmering pale green satin that rippled about her feet as she walked, brought out a bit of colour in her cheeks and lips, deepened the brown of her eyes, and, like the stalk and leaves of a tiger-lily, faded into utter insignificance before the burnished masses of her red-gold hair.