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MARIA FELICIA

rushed out to see the beautiful daughter riding on a horse beside her valiant father. She was not only his love, but the love of the street youngsters. They knew from afar the tramping of her horse, and greeted her with deafening cheers before they saw her. The Countess always generously scattered change and sweets among them. She never went out without such a supply, and never failed to thank the children for their happy greeting with a gay swing of her gold whip and her most pleasant smiles. When her jealous rivals privately set down a list of the faults of the proud and bold Miss Felsenburk, who dared to outshine them with the luster of her beauty and wealth, they did not neglect to include the fact that she never smiled so pleasantly on the guests at entertainments in her father’s palace as she did on the street youngsters, and that no person of her own rank interested her in so great a measure as the bare-footed urchins.

But of late a cloud had come over the friendship of the father and the daughter; the