is unfastened. Hazel has been crying, and the tears must have been both
plentiful and bitter, for unmistakable traces exist, in spite of hurried
efforts to efface them. For once, though, Brightie is thoroughly
self-engrossed, and fails to notice even Hazel's face.

"I have such wonderful news, my dear!" she exclaims, the moment she is
admitted into the room.

Hazel expresses her interest, and, with her loving smile and tender way,
ensconces her friend in the one attempt at an easy chair her room
possesses, and then kneels beside her to listen.

"Well, my dear, you have heard me speak of my sister's house at
Firdorf?"

"Of course! Often. Where you used to live, and the flowers were so
lovely."

"Yes! and where the sweet white jasmine used to blossom, filling the air
with its delicious fragrance when we sat in the summer evenings beneath
the trellis work, in front of the dear old home."

As she speaks of the jasmine, old Miss Bright's hand is laid caressingly
on Hazel's hair, and her eyes--happily not too keen without her glasses,
or they would detect the tear marks--rest with softened look, full of
tender memories, on the girl's sympathetic, upturned face.

"There were always we three there--I, and my sister and her boy. You
have heard how the home was broken up, how Tom ran away, and how we lost
our money, and how Janie's spirit broke down under it, till at length