his help, he would be the first to ask me to offer it. Never shake your head, Dolly."

"I won't, Nora, if it vexes you."

"And say to me solemnly, love, that you only object to me because I am Henry Werner's wife; that you only refuse my present because bought with my husband's money." "That is true, Lenny. I could refuse nothing that came from you yourself."

"Then, darling, you won't refuse this;" and Mrs. Werner placed in Dolly's hands a tiny little purse and pocket-book bound together in ivory. "Charley, my cousin—you remember Charley—sent me the contents of that purse to buy some little trinket for myself as a memory of the old days at Dassell. He has married an heiress, Dolly; and those waste lands in the north, my uncle was always lamenting over, have turned out to be a sort of El Dorado. Charley's dear kind letter reached me yesterday, and I straightway wrote back to him, saying,

"Besides yourself I never had but one friend in all my life. I wanted to make a present to her, and you have supplied the means. Believe me, in granting me the power to do this you have given me ropes of pearls—to quote Lothair—and miles on miles of diamonds; so there it is, dear—poor Charley's Christmas gift to me, of which my husband knows nothing."

And she rose, and fastening her fur cloak would have departed, but that Dolly, clutching her arm, said,

"Don't go, Leonora, for an instant. Let me exorcise my demon with the help of your presence."

"Pride, dear," suggested the other.

"I do not know—I cannot tell. He rends me to pieces, and I hate myself and him. I want your present badly, Lenny, and yet—and yet I long to compel you to take back your gift."

"Darling," answered Mrs. Werner, "though you are a mother, you never knew what it was to have a mother to love you. Fancy, for a moment I am your mother, saying, 'Dolly, keep it.' Could not that reconcile you, love. And some day it may be I or one belonging to me shall in bitter strait need your help; you would not then like to remember you had refused in your trouble to be assisted by one of us. You would not wish now to place a barrier between yourself and any one belonging to me who might hereafter ask your aid."

"No," Dolly answered slowly. "I should not. It may be—impossible as it now seems—that one of your children, or even you yourself, Leonora, might hereafter stand in need of such comfort as I could give; and just as surely as I take your present to-night, I will return your goodness then. In the words of The Book, 'May God do so to me and more if ever for ever I forget you and yours.'"

"Thank you, Dolly, it is a good vow for Christmas Eve. Good-bye dear, do not come out with me."

For reply, Dolly folding a shawl around her walked along the Grove and to the cross road where Mr. Werner's carriage was waiting.

"You ought not to be out in this damp night air," said Mrs. Werner.

But Dolly only shook her head. The footman banged the door, the coachman touched his horses, Mrs. Werner put down the window and waved her hand, and Dolly returned to the small house all alone. There, expecting perhaps to find a ten-pound note in the silken folds of the new purse, she opened Mrs. Werner's present; but, behold! it was no bank-note which her fingers discovered, but a slip of paper on which was written,

"Pay to Mrs. Werner or order one hundred pounds," and on the back a signature, that of "Leonora Werner."