"We'll keep to our own roots.

We are all of one mind, you and Aunt Angela and I." "I'm sure Angela would never hear of it," pursued Uncle Percival, "and in her affliction how could one expect it ?" For a moment Laura looked at him in a compassionate pause before she made her spring.

"There's nothing in the world the matter with Aunt Angela," she said; "she's perfectly well." Blank wonder crept into the old gentleman's little blue eyes and he shook his head several times in solemn if voiceless protest.

Forty years ago Angela Wilde, as a girl of twenty, had in the accustomed family phrase "brought lasting disgrace upon them," and she had dwelt, as it were, in the shadow of the pillory ever since.

Unmarried she had yielded herself to a lover, and afterward when the full scandal had burst upon her head, though she had not then reached the fulfilment of a singularly charming beauty, she had condemned herself to the life of a solitary prisoner within four walls.