off any longer. We must go over the
house this afternoon. There are a great many things that I wish to
show you and speak to you about--things that have to be divided
between you and Dent."

"Not to-day! not to-day!" he cried, turning to her with quick
appeal. But she shook her head slowly, with brave cheerfulness.

"Yes; to-day. Now; and then we shall be over with it. Wait for me
here." She passed down the long hall to her bedroom, and as she
disappeared he rushed into the parlors and threw himself on a couch
with his hands before his face; then he sprang up and came out into
the hall again and waited with a quiet face.

When she returned, smiling, she brought with her a large bunch of
keys, and she took his arm dependently as they went up the wide
staircase. She led him to the upper bedrooms first--in earlier
years so crowded and gay with guests, but unused during later ones.
The shutters were closed, and the afternoon sun shot yellow shafts
against floors and walls. There was a perfume of lavender, of rose
leaves.

"Somewhere in one of these closets there is a roll of linen." She
opened one after another, looking into each. "No; it is not here.
Then it must be in there. Yes; here it is. This linen was spun
and woven from flax grown on your great-great-grandfather's land.
Look at it! It is beautifully made. Each generation of the family
has inherited part and left the rest for generations yet to come.
Half of it is yours, half is Dent's. When it has been divided
until there is no longer enough to divide, that will be the last of
the home-made linen of the old time. It was a good time, Rowan; it
produced masterful men and masterful women, not mannish women.
Perhaps the golden age of our nation will some day prove to have
been the period of the home-spun Americans."

As they passed on she spoke to him with an increasing, almost
unnatural gayety. He had a new appreciation of what her charm must
have been when she was a girl. The rooms were full of memories to
her; many of the articles that she caressed with her fingers, and
lingered over with reluctant eyes, connected themselves with days
and nights of revelry and the joy of living; also with prides and
deeds which ennobled her recollection.

"You and Dent know that your father divided equally all that he
had. But everything in the house is mine, and I have made no will
and shall not make any. What is mine belongs to you two alike.
Still, I