the way to Boston Sister Sue caught herself looking furtively over her shoulder. She could not get rid of the idea that she was running away, and that she would be followed and taken back home, like a naughty child. Before her eyes always was, not the letters from her brother and sister, but the fact behind the letters, that she could be and would be a real benefit to either family if she were to accept their offer—of a home. Already she had brought about a wondrous improvement in Gordon's wife; she knew that; and she knew, too, that there was a chance for her to do a great deal more by the quiet influence of her own presence. And as for real, practical aid in the way of housework and nursing, there was no limit to the service she might be in that line to both families. It needed no imagination to picture herself being, in their homes, a self-sacrificing, long-suffering Sister Sue for the rest of her days. Unfortunately, however, there was still another home she pictured, and in which, with distressingly growing frequency, she was picturing herself—her own home; her own home where it would really be this time "all for love and the world well lost." This picture, though, was one that always came unbidden, and which was, if possible, put to rout at once with a scornful: "For shame! And he dead in love with a Beth who sings or a Helen who paints! And you knowing it all the time!" Determinedly, then, always Sister Sue would bring to mind that other picture, the picture which for so many years had been her star of promise—the picture of herself holding enthralled by the ends of her fingers the vast multitudes who had come to hear her play. And she told herself that now—now at last—she had her chance! And so she began to lay her plans. Plans in which there was no room for a Mabel who needed polishing, or a May who needed nursing, or yet a Donald Kendall who did not need loving—but was loved just the same.
Arrived in Boston, however, all pictures vanished. In Sister Sue's nostrils was the sooty smell of the engine smoke—to her a veritable perfume of Araby. In Sister Sue's eyes were the shifting throngs of moving people—to her a veritable kaleidoscope of charm and color. In Sister Sue's ears was the new yet ever familiar rush and roar of a great city—a veritable song of freedom to the long-restrained little woman who seemed to herself to be walking on air instead of on the somewhat dirty floor of a huge railroad station.
In the waiting-room she found Mr. Loring watching for her; and in the Lorings' beautiful home that night she slept the sleep of a tired child. For nearly a week she "just played and rested," as she termed it to Mrs. Loring. Begging to be left quite alone to her own devices, she foraged in the libraries and museums; fed her longing soul on concerts and plays; and then she would go home to a good book, a box of chocolates, and a luxurious couch with the lights just right.
And so, rested, refreshed, and fairly tingling with the joy of living, she went to see Signor Bartoni.
He was busy with a pupil, said the trim little maid ushering her into the old, familiar reception-room. Would she please wait? It would not be for long. Sister Sue drew a long breath then—and sat down. She was glad to wait. Perhaps her heart would not beat so fast nor her hands tremble quite so much after ten minutes of quiet rest in the dear old room.
Slipping off her coat and gloves, she got her music in readiness. On top was the same Liszt concerto she had played for him that memorable day years before when he had set the match to the gunpowder of her ambition. Underneath was a Beethoven sonata, a lyric from Schumann, something from Chopin, and several romantic and emotional little classics she had played for him in those old days, winning from him his "Gr-rand!" "Splend-eed, Mees Gilmore!"
From behind the closed door leading to the rear drawing-room came the sound of a Chopin nocturne, played rather indifferently and with frequent interruptions in Signor Bartoni's high-pitched, staccato voice. It came to an end at last, and the door opened to admit Signor Bartoni and a very pretty young girl. He came forward at once with outstretched hands.
"Mees Gilmore! It is Mees Gilmore!" he exclaimed. "I am delighted, delighted!" He took both her hands in his, and beamed upon her with his little twinkling eyes.
Sister Sue laughed and blushed and drew in her breath with an ecstatic little catch. Like a cloak, then, the intervening years fell away and left her in her own eyes the girl of twenty.
"I have come, yes—to learn to be the great artiste," she breathed.