“But you said you had no friends except the man you married,” Alice urged, trying to follow the narrative.

“Yes, dear, you are right,” Eleanor replied somewhat confused; “but one always finds friends when in trouble, you know.  It was so with me, and after I recovered my strength I lived on there in Denver with the small legacy my father left me, supplemented later by a little more from the sale of the ranch.  A year after Carina’s death I applied for a divorce, on the ground of desertion.  My lawyer found Ralph somewhere to serve the summons on him, and reported him as having already become a professional gambler and a confirmed drunkard.  He made no defence at the trial, and I have never seen him since.”

“But it’s all over now, Eleanor dear,” Alice said, soothingly.  “Daddy and I will try to make up to you for what you have been through.  You must let us do that.”

“You have done it already,” Eleanor replied, feelingly, her temporary obsession having passed.  “You and darling little Patricia have become a real part of my life, and my one prayer has been that I could do as much for you.  Your father restored my lost faith in men almost the first time I met him in my lawyer’s office in Denver.”

“Yes.”  Alice accepted the tribute to her father as a matter of fact.  “He nearly killed himself in Pittsburgh before he gave up his business there, and he went out West two or three times to get back his health.  And the last time he brought you back, too.  I have always loved the West for that.”

Mrs. Gorham smiled as she continued:  “I learned of his work from others and from himself, and rejoiced to find a man with real ideals, in business and in his every-day life, actually lived up to.  I had no notion of what that first chance meeting would lead to, of the home that it would give me among my girlhood friends, filled with the love and sympathy which my heart had always craved.  Now you know the whole story, Alice dear—­now you know why the tears come sometimes to my eyes as I press to my heart that quaint, precious little sister of yours, so near the age Carina would have been, who softens the memory of the sweet dead face by giving to it a living reality.”

“I understand,” the girl cried, throwing her arms about Eleanor’s neck and embracing her warmly.  “I can’t say the right thing now I am so unstrung, but I love you even more than ever because you’ve let me share it with you.”

So they separated for the night—­the woman’s heart bleeding from the reopening of the former wound, yet happier that her accepted confidante had become acquainted with that part of her life which was consecrated to a memory; the girl made older by the sudden drawing of the curtain from one of life’s daily yet unheralded tragedies.

VIII