"Dear Marian, I wonder is she very poor?" Katy thought, as she next day made her preparations for the call, and had Wilford been parsimoniously inclined, he might have winced could he have seen the numerous stores gathered up for Marian and packed away in the carriage with the bundle of cambric and linen and lace, all destined for that fourth-story chamber where Marian Hazelton sat that summer morning, looking drearily out upon the dingy court and contrasting its sickly patch of grass, embellished with rain water barrels, coal hods and ash pails, with the country she had so lately left, the wooded hills and blooming gardens of Silverton, which had been her home for nearly two years.
It was a fault of Marian's not to remain long contented in any place, and so tiring of the country she had returned to the great city, urged on by a strange desire it may be to see Mrs. Wilford Cameron, to know just how she lived, to judge if she were happy, and perhaps--some time see Wilford Cameron, herself unknown, for not for the world would she have met face to face the man who had so often stood by Genevra Lambert's grave in the churchyard beyond the sea. Thinking she might succeed better alone, she had hired a room far up the narrow stairway of a high, somber-looking building, and then from her old acquaintances, of whom she had several in the city, she had solicited work. More than once she had passed the handsome house on Madison Square where Katy lived, walking slowly and gazing with dim eyes which could not weep at Wilford Cameron's luxurious home, and contrasting it with hers, that one room, which yet was not wholly uninviting, for where Marian went there was always an air of humble comfort; and Katy, as she crossed the threshold, uttered an exclamation of delight at the cheerful, airy aspect of the apartment, with its bright ingrain carpet, its simple shades of white, its chintz-covered lounge, its one rocking-chair, its small parlor stove, and its pots of flowers upon the broad window sill.
"Oh, Marian," she exclaimed, tripping across the floor, and impulsively throwing her arms around Miss Hazelton's neck, "I am so glad to meet some one from home. It seems almost like Helen I am kissing," and her lips again met those of Marian Hazelton, who amid her own joy at finding Katy unchanged, wondered what the Camerons would say to see their Mrs. Wilford kissing a poor seamstress whom they would have spurned.