the world."

"I can't see what difference it makes if I wish to do it. You always divide everything you have with me, and I don't see why you can't let me be generous for once."

Madge's eyes were misty. The thought of her mother and father made it hard for her to speak without emotion. "Besides," she added, smiling in her charming fashion, "I will never wear a pink gown. No one need try to persuade me. It wouldn't be in keeping with my red hair!"

Eleanor put her arm around her cousin. She understood the little quaver in Madge's laughing voice.

"Of course I will have the dress, if you feel that way about it," she said gently. "And I shall adore it. Why, I can see myself in it this minute, with a pink rose fastened in my hair. But all this time you and I have been arguing Mother has not yet said that you could use the silks. Please consent, Mother; there's a dear."

Mrs. Butler looked grave. "I suppose it is all right," she hesitated. "The silks belong to Madge and she is old enough to decide what she wishes to do with them. Look in my left-hand bureau drawer, Madge; you will find the key to your mother's trunk there. The silks are in the bottom of the trunk, wrapped in a piece of old, yellow muslin. We might as well find out whether the material is still good before we decide what we will do about it. I must go back now to my jelly; it must be nearly done."

"Come up to the attic with me, won't you, Eleanor?" invited Madge.

Eleanor shook her head. She knew her cousin liked best to make these visits to her mother's trunk alone. "No," she answered, "I must help Mother with the jelly."

Nellie slipped quietly away and left Madge looking dreamily out on the elm-shaded lawn, her thoughts busy with the story of her own past and the little she knew of her father.

He had been a captain in the United States Navy, and one of the youngest officers in the service. The Mortons were an old Virginia family, and after Robert Morton's graduation from Annapolis he was rapidly promoted in the service. He had married Mrs. Butler's only sister, Eleanor, for whom Nellie was named. Two months after Madge's birth, while her husband was away on a cruise, Madge's mother died at her sister's home, and, as her father never came back to claim her, she had been brought up by her uncle and aunt. This was all she had been told of the story of her mother and father. It made her aunt unhappy to talk of them, so Madge had asked few questions as she grew to young womanhood. But to-day she felt that she would like to know whether her father had died and been buried at sea—she always thought of him as dead—or whether a tablet had ever been erected to his memory at Annapolis. She had never been to Annapolis, although it was not a great distance from Miss Tolliver's school, but she knew that the Government often honored its brave officers and sailors with these memorials.

She was thinking of these things as she left the dining room and climbed the steep, ladder-like stairs that led to the attic. The attic of "Forest House" was worth a longer journey than Madge had to make. It was built of solid cedar wood, with beams a foot thick over head, and put together with great cedar pegs. The attic was a long, low-ceilinged room, dark and fragrant with the odor of the cedar. It was lit by four big, old-fashioned dormer windows in the front and four in the rear.

Her mother's trunk was kept in one corner of the attic behind an old oak chest. Mrs. Butler did not wish to be haunted by sad memories when she made her frequent trips to her attic to look after the family clothing and bedding, so she had partly hidden her sister's trunk.

Madge opened the trunk in the half light. On top of everything was a pile of her first baby dresses. Farther down she came upon a sandalwood box containing her mother's jewelry. The box contained a beautiful and unusual collection of rare stones. Captain Morton had brought many of the jewels back from the Orient as presents to his wife.

Madge picked up a necklace of uncut turquoises, set in links of curiously carved dull gold. For an instant she looked at it, then slipped it over her head. There was also a tortoise-shell comb of wonderful beauty to match the necklace. The crown of the comb was formed of turquoises and pearls. Just in the center of the comb was a tiny scarab made of turquoises. The scarab Madge knew to be a beetle sacred to the Egyptians. She wondered if the beautiful set of jewelry had an unusual history. Madge put the comb in her hair, then plunged deeper into the lavender-scented trunk. Under a pile of old-fashioned gowns she found the bundle that she desired, tied up in yellow muslin just as her aunt had described it. Tucking it under her arm she hurried to the front windows and sat down Turk fashion on the floor. She wished to examine carefully the well-remembered silks. It had been several years since she had seen them, yet how well she recalled them! She and Nellie had never grown tired of marveling at the beautiful fabrics when, as little girls, they were allowed to glance at the silks by way of a special treat.

The young girl untied her precious bundle slowly. She gently unrolled the pink silk. It was a wonderful rose color, a pure Chinese silk, as light and soft as a butterfly's wing. Madge saw a vision of Nellie in this dress. It must be trimmed with an old collar of Venetian point lace, which was one of Mrs. Butler's heirlooms. Then she unrolled the blue silk. The material to be used for her frock was a Japanese crepe. It had a border of shaded blue and silver threads forming a design of orchids. It was too beautiful a costume for a young girl, Madge thought. She held her breath as she looked at it. Would her aunt allow her to use it?

Spying a broken mirror on an old bureau in the attic, she brought it over to the light and propped it against the back of a worn-out chair. Then she wrapped the blue silk about her shoulders and stared at herself in the mirror.

Madge was an exceedingly pretty young girl. This afternoon her face showed a promise of the unusual beauty that was to come to her later in life, when she had learned many things. There was a hint of tragedy in her charming, wayward nature. The friends who loved her knew that her path through life would not follow an easy and untroubled road. She could never do anything in a half-way fashion, whether it were to love or to hate, to be happy or to be miserable.

To-day her blue eyes were dark with wonder at her own appearance and with the memory of her dead mother and father. With the strange jewels in her hair and about her throat, the beautiful blue robe around her shoulders, little country-bred Madge looked as though she might have been a beautiful princess of the long ago.

Being free from vanity, however, she calmly folded up her silks, took off her jewels, and turned from the window to go downstairs to show her cousin her treasures.

At the door of the attic she paused and glanced back at the open trunk, then, walking slowly toward it, deposited her jewel box and armful of silks on the top of the old cedar chest and sat down before the trunk. What strange influence drew her back to it that day Madge could never explain. She knew only that the longing for the love of the father she had never seen, and the mother she could not remember, was strong within her.

"What made you leave me when I needed you so?" she murmured, half under her breath. Then she bowed her head on the edge of the trunk and her tears dropped on a little, old-fashioned black velvet coat that had been her mother's. Impulsively Madge caught it up and pressed it to her lips. After a long moment she laid it across her lap and began smoothing it with loving hands, tenderly tracing its lines with her forefinger. As she was about to fold it and lay it in its accustomed place her hand came in contact with something hard in the cuff of one sleeve between the velvet and the satin lining.

"What can it be?" she wondered, as she fingered it through the cloth. "It feels like a key.