d, "how quietly you
entered. I had no idea you were in the room. Heliotrope is the name of
the scent, my dear, but please do not allude to it again. Your Aunt
Deborah and I are very fond of it"--here she sighed--"but for certain
reasons--reasons you would not understand--we do not like to hear the
word heliotrope mentioned. Kiss me, dear, and run away to your
breakfast."

For the first time in my life, perhaps, I was greatly puzzled. I could
not see why I should be forbidden to refer to such a pleasant and
harmless subject--a subject that, looked at from no matter what point
of view, did not appear to me to be in the slightest degree
indelicate. The more I thought over it, the more convinced I became
that there was some association between the scent and the sunbeam,
and in that association I felt sure much of the mystery lay.

The house was haunted--agreeably, delightfully haunted by a golden
light, a perfumed radiant light that could only have in my mind one
origin, one creator--Titania--Titania, queen of the fairies, the
guardian angel of my aged, my extremely aged relatives.

"Aunt Deborah," I said one morning, as I found her seated in the
embrasure of the breakfast room window crocheting, "Aunt Deborah! You
love the sunlight, do you not?"

She turned on me a startled face. "What makes you ask such strange
questions, child?" she said. "Of course I like the--sun. Most people
do. It is no uncommon thing, especially at my age."

"But the sunbeams do not follow every one, auntie, do they?" I
persisted.

Miss Deborah's crochet fell into her lap.

"How queerly you talk," she said, with a curious trembling of her
lips. "How can the sunbeams follow one?"

"But they do, auntie, they do indeed!" I cried. "I have often watched
a bright beam of golden light follow Aunt Amelia and you, in
different parts of the room. And it has settled on your lace collar
now."

Miss Deborah looked at me very seriously; but the moistening of her
eyes I attributed to the strong light. "Esther," she said, laying one
of her soft hands on my forehead, "there are things God does not want
little girls to understand--question me no more."

I obeyed, but henceforth I felt more than ever assured that my aunts,
consciously or unconsciously, shared their charming abode with some
capricious genii, of whose presence in their midst I had become
accidentally aware; and to find out the enchanted neighbourhood of its
mysterious retreat was to me now