CHAPTER IV.
HERO'S STORY Late that afternoon the Major sat out in the shady courtyard of the hotel, where vines, potted plants, and a fountain made a cool green garden spot.
He was thinking of his little daughter, who had been dead many long years.
The American child, whom his dog had rescued from the runaway in the morning, was wonderfully like her.

She had the same fair hair, he thought, that had been his little Christine's great beauty; the same delicate, wild-rose pink in her cheeks, the same mischievous smile dimpling her laughing face.

But Christine's eyes had not been a starry hazel like the Little Colonel's.

They were blue as the flax-flowers she used to gather--thirty, was it?
No, forty years ago.
As he counted the years, the thought came to him like a pain that he was an old, old man now, all alone in the world, save for a dog, and a niece whom he scarcely knew and seldom saw.
As he sat there with his head bowed down, dreaming over his past, the Little Colonel came out into the courtyard.

She had dressed early and gone down to the reading-room to wait until her mother was ready for dinner, but catching sight of the Major through the long glass doors, she laid down her book.