Miggie should never go back to her bad father and his proud family.  And Marie, who hated them bitterly, all but Nina, kept her word.  She wrote to Sunnybank that both were dead, and the letter was forwarded by your grandmother to Mr. Bernard, who had gone after his wife, but who lay drunk many days at a hotel.  The letter sobered him, and as it contained Marie’s address, he found her at last, crying bitterly for little Miggie, up stairs asleep, but he thought her in the coffin with her mother.  Marie said so and he believed her, bringing the bodies back to Sunnybank, and burying them beneath the magnolias.”

“And built a great marble there with both their names cut on it,” chimed in Nina, fearful lest any part of the story should be omitted.

“Yes,” returned Edith, “he raised a costly monument to their memory; but don’t you wish to know what became of Miggie?”

“Yes, yes, oh, yes, go on,” was Nina’s answer; and Edith continued,

“Marie was too poor to take care of Miggie, and she put her in the Asylum.”

“The Asylum!” Nina fairly screamed.  “Nina’s baby sister in the nasty old Asylum.  No, no, it ain’t.  I won’t, I shan’t listen to the naughty story,” and the excited girl covered her head with a pillow.

But Edith removed it gently, and with a few loving words quieted the little lady, who said again, “Go on.”

“It was the Orphan Asylum, where Nina’s sister was put, but they didn’t call her Miggie.  Her dying mother gave her another name lest the father should some time find her, and there in that great noisy city Miggie lived five or six long years, gradually forgetting everything in the past, everything but Marie’s name and the airs her mother used to sing.  Miggie had a taste for music, and she retained the plaintive strains sung to her as lullabys.”

“I know them, too,” Nina said, beginning to hum one, while Edith continued,

“After a time Marie went back to France.  She did not mean to stay long, but she was attacked with a lingering, painful sickness, and could not return to Miggie, whom a beautiful lady took at last as her waiting-maid.  Then Arthur came—­Arthur, a boy—­and she saw Nina’s picture.”

“The one in the locket!  Nina asked, and Edith answered, “Yes, ’twas in a locket, and it puzzled Miggie till she spoke the name, but thought it was Arthur who told her.”

“Wait, wait,” cried Nina, suddenly striking her forehead a heavy blow; “I’m getting all mixed up, and something flashes across my brain like lightning.  I reckon it’s a streak of sense.  It feels like it.”

Nina was right.  It was “a streak of sense,” and when Edith again resumed her story the crazy girl was very calm and quiet.

“After a time this Miggie went to live with a blind man—­with Richard,” and Edith’s hands closed tightly around the snowy fingers, which crept so quickly toward her.  “She grew to be a woman.  She met this golden-haired Nina, but did not know her, though Nina called her Miggie always, because she looked like Petrea, and the sound to Miggie was very sweet, like music heard long ago.  They loved each other dearly, and to Miggie there was nothing in the whole world so beautiful, so precious, as poor little crazy Nina, Arthur’s Nina, Dr. Griswold’s Nina, ’Snow-Drop,’ Richard called her.  You remember Richard, darling?”