“Olwen loves my cats; but not nearly so much as my cats love her ,” said Selena Gault tenderly.

The little girl cuddled up to the black-gowned figure and laid her head against the old maid’s sleeve. Her wild spirit seemed to have ebbed away from every portion of her body except her eyes. These refused to remove themselves from those of the visitor; and, as his own mood changed this way and that, these dusky mirrors changed with it, reflecting thoughts that no child’s conscious brain could possibly have understood.

“But you know you love your Aunt Mattie as if she were your mother,” said Selena Gault. “She’s been so good to you that you’d be a very ungrateful little girl if you didn’t love her.”