and the surrounding countryside, but also the house with all his new and fascinating possessions.

masses

As the weeks passed, lan learned a great deal about his great-aunt much general infor- from the mation of paper and documents stored away in the house, and more detailed and intimate facts from Margaret who had been in her household for approximately thirty years. To his surprise,

was

for he had noticed that all docu- ments, even as far back as sixty years earlier, were addressed to "Miss McGregor," - Great Aunt Millie had in fact been married. Her bridegroom was an officer of the Regular Army, and she married him at the beginning of August in 1914, in the full knowledge that he would have to leave her almost immediately to go with his regiment to France. She never saw him again! The telegram, telling her that he had been killed, came within ten days of the wedding while she still writing letters of thanks for the wedding gifts. At the end of the war, after a great deal of thought (and since there were no children of the marriage), she decided tra her maiden name. It was, in fact, that war which ultimately made Ian her heir, for Millie herself was an only child and although her husband had had two brothers and a sister, the two boys were killed before the end of the war. The sister, Isobel, married a John Paterson after the war and their only child, also named John, was lan's father.

revert

Margaret, besides being a most efficient housekeeper, was a goldmine of information, not only, about Great Aunt Millie, but also about Braefoot House and the local neighborhood. Sehe must have been nearly forty years older than Ian

and as he settled down into his new life, she quickly adopted the attitude of of a protective

aunt to him.

Ian continued to be fasci-

nated by the portrait in the hall. Although there was no repeti- tion of the experience he had felt in the minutes after he had first set eyes on it, he felt that his aunt's beautiful eyes and and friendly lips were trying hard to tell him some- thing.

warm

The picture had a marvel- lously calming influence on Ian and occasionally, in the long warm evenings, he would settle down in a chair in the hall, just to be near her. Unconsciously he found that he had accepted quite early that the familiarity of her face had not come from his study of photographs of her in London. It had come (al- lowing for the characteristic differences in male and female features and masculine and fem- inine attitudes and clothing), from the fact that the face in the portrait was the face that he saw every day in a mirror. The similiarity was very marked quite extraordinarily so, in fact - and it was something that Margaret couldn't get over. And it was this fact (with one or two other reasons), which steered Ian in the way that he was to go.

Margaret, in taking him on a tour of the house that first day, had pointed out as incon- spicuous door to what she said was a storeroom. However, Ian had had so much to do and see and learn at that time that it was actually some months before it occurred to him to wonder what, in fact, was stored in it. "Margaret that storeroom on the top floor what's in it?" "Oh just some things of your Great Aunt's, Mr. Ian.' "What sort of things?" "Clothes mostly.”

"Clothes? I thought that we'd given all those away?"

"Yes, we did, but these are different. Ever since she was quite young, Miss Millie every time she went to some special occasion like a ball, garden party, dinner, things like that would store away in boxes

all the clothes she's worn and

never wear them again. She used to say that they preserved for her forever the memory and the flavor of each special day."

"Goodness! Are there very many clothes there?" "Oh yes

masses! It's some time since I saw them all the boxes are locked away in

cupboards - but there must be well over a hundred complete outfits, I would think."

Ian digested this remarkable information (there seemed to be no end to the surprising things his Great Aunt had done), and then made up his mind - and fulfilled his destiny!!

"THis I must see! Off you go and get the keys and then let's take a look.”"

"I don't need to go I have them here already!"

The inconspicuous door led into a room much larger than Ian had imagined. Set in the center of the house, it had no windows and was insulated from the rest of the world by other rooms around and below it and by the attics above. Ac- cording to Margaret the tempera- ture and humidity never varied by more than a few degrees even in the bitterest winters or torrid summers. It was not a room to live in all four walls were lined from floor to ceiling with white painted cupboards, and there were more in a double row across the center of the lit- tle room. Margaret, busy with a large bunch of keys, swung open one of the doors. Neatly stacked in a rack up the left half of the cupboard were brown dress-boxes, each with a label on the end. On the right hung sheeted forms from a row of coathangers.

"The box holds the un- derware and shoes and all the accessories handbag, gloves, jewellery, a hat if there was one- while the dress itself is on the hanger."

"Can we take one out

to see?"

"Yes, of course

which