“You’ve been as good as can be to me, Aunt Sylvia.”

“And I’m on the lookout for a carriage and horse you can drive, and I’ve been planning to have some parties for you.  I’ve tried to think of everything that would make you feel happy and contented and at home.”

“Oh, you have; I know you have, dear Aunt Sylvia,” murmured Rose.

“I have done all I knew how,” repeated Sylvia, in a stony fashion.  She put the girl gently away and turned to go, but Rose caught her arm.

“Aunt Sylvia, you aren’t going like this!” she cried.  “I was afraid you wouldn’t like it, though I don’t know why.  It does seem that Horace is all you could ask, if I were your very own daughter.”

“You are like my very own daughter,” said Sylvia, stiffly.

“Then why don’t you like Horace?”

“I never said anything against him.”

“Then why do you look so?”

Sylvia stood silent.

“You won’t go without kissing me, anyway, will you?” sobbed Rose.

This time she really wept with genuine hurt and bewilderment.

Sylvia bent and touched her thin, very cold lips to Rose’s.  “Now go to bed,” she said, and moved away, and was out of the room in spite of Rose’s piteous cry to her to come back.

Henry, after he had entered the house and discovered that Sylvia was up-stairs with Rose, sat down to his evening paper.  He tried to read, but could not get further than the glaring headlines about a kidnapping case.  He was listening always for Sylvia’s step on the stair.

At last he heard it.  He turned the paper, with a loud rustle, to the continuation of the kidnapping case as she entered the room.  He did not even look up.  He appeared to be absorbed in the paper.

Sylvia closed the hall door behind her noiselessly; then she crossed the room and closed the door leading into the dining-room.  Henry watched her with furtive eyes.  He was horribly dismayed without knowing why.  When Sylvia had the room completely closed she came close to him.  She extended her right hand, and he saw that it contained a little sheaf of yellowed newspaper clippings pinned together.

“Henry Whitman,” said she.

“Sylvia, you are as white as a sheet.  What on earth ails you?”

“Do you know what has happened?”

Henry’s eyes fell before her wretched, questioning ones.  “What do you mean, Sylvia?” he said, in a faint voice.

“Do you know that Mr. Allen and Rose have come to an understanding and are going to get married?”

Henry stared at her.

“She has just told me,” said Sylvia.  “Here I have done everything in the world I could for her to make her contented.”

“Sylvia, what on earth makes you feel so?  She is only going to do what every girl who has a good chance does—­what you did yourself.”

“Look at here,” said Sylvia, in an awful voice.

“What are they?”