"Yes, I just managed it. Old Mrs. Harding was there. She is failing very
fast, poor old soul. Part of the time she thought I was Cousin James, Aunt
Lucy. She wanted to know when I heard last from my sister Lydia."

Miss Merivale put her cup down with a little clatter. Her hand had begun
to tremble. "You are very much like James, Tom," she said, glancing at the
portrait that hung on the wainscoted wall just above him, "and you get
more like him every day."

It was the portrait of her only brother she was looking at. Tom and Rose
were her cousin's children, though they called her aunt. She had adopted
them when Rose was a baby and Tom a sturdy lad of five. Woodcote had been
their home ever since. Tom had grown up knowing that the estate was to be
his at Miss Merivale's death. James Merivale had died young, ten years
before his father; and Lydia, Miss Merivale's only sister, had married
against her father's wishes, and had been disowned by him. After vainly
trying to gain his forgiveness, she and her husband emigrated to
Australia, and for some years nothing was heard of them. Then Lydia wrote
to her father, telling him that she was a widow, and begging him to send
her money that she might come home. The stern old man burnt the letter
without answering it and without showing it to his daughter Lucy, and the
next news came in a letter written by Lydia to her sister.

She had married again, her husband's partner, James Sampson, and had a
little daughter, whom she had named Rhoda, after her mother. The letter
asked for money, and Miss Merivale sent what she could, though she had
little to send, for her father demanded a strict account of all she spent.

She gave him the letter to read, and he returned it to her without a word;
but his heart must have relented towards his disobedient daughter at the