that she felt at once that her aunt’s world was smaller than her own.  There was something very lovable about Miss Prince, in spite of the constraint of her greeting, and for the first time Nan understood that her aunt also had dreaded the meeting.  Presently she came to the door, and this time kissed Nan affectionately.  “I don’t know what to say to you, I am sure,” she told the girl, “only I am thankful to have you here.  You must understand that it is a great event to me;” at which Nan laughed and spoke some cheerful words.  Miss Prince seated herself by the other front window, and looked at her young guest with ever-growing satisfaction.  This was no copy of that insolent, ill-bred young woman who had so beguiled and ruined poor Jack; she was a little lady, who did honor to the good name of the Princes and Lesters,—­a niece whom anybody might be proud to claim, and whom Miss Prince could cordially entreat to make herself quite at home, for she had only been too long in coming to her own.  And presently, when tea was served, the careful ordering of it, which had been meant partly to mock and astonish the girl who could not have been used to such ways of living, seemed only a fitting entertainment for so distinguished a guest.  “Blood will tell,” murmured Miss Prince to herself as she clinked the teacups and looked at the welcome face the other side of the table.  But when they talked together in the evening, it was made certain that Nan was neither ashamed of her mother’s people nor afraid to say gravely to Miss Prince that she did not know how much injustice was done to grandmother Thacher, if she believed she were right in making a certain statement.  Aunt Nancy smiled, and accepted her rebuff without any show of disapproval, and was glad that the next day was Sunday, so that she could take Nan to church for the admiration of all observers.  She was even sorry that she had not told young Gerry to come and pay an evening visit to her niece, and spoke of him once or twice.  Her niece observed a slight self-consciousness at such times, and wondered a little who Mr. George Gerry might be.

Nan thought of many things before she fell asleep that night.  Her ideas of her father had always been vague, and she had somehow associated him with Dr. Leslie, who had shown her all the fatherliness she had ever known.  As for the young man who had died so long ago, if she had said that he seemed to her like a younger brother of Dr. Leslie, it would have been nearest the truth, in spite of the details of the short and disappointed life which had come to her ears.  Dr. Ferris had told her almost all she knew of him, but now that she was in her own father’s old home, among the very same sights he had known best, he suddenly appeared to her in a vision, as one might say, and invested himself in a cloud of attractive romance.  His daughter felt a sudden blaze of delight at this first real consciousness of her kinship.  Miss Prince had shown her brother’s portrait