Pinckneys lived at a house
called Bures in Legare Street. A fine old house it was, and is still.
Well, I was a cousin with a little money of my own, and I was left lonely
and they took me in. James Pinckney was head of the family then, and he
had two sons, Rupert and Charles. I might have been their sister the way
we all lived together and loved each other--and quarrelled. Dear me, dear
me, what is Time at all that it leaves everything the same? The same sun,
and flowers and houses, and all the people gone or changed-- Well, I am
trying to tell you-- Rupert fell in love with Juliet Mascarene, who lived
here. He was killed suddenly in '61-- I don't want to talk of it--and she
died of grief the year after. She died of grief--simply died of grief.
Charles lived and married in 1880 when he was forty years old. He married
Juliet's brother's daughter and Vernons came to him on the marriage. He
hadn't a son till ten years later. That son was Richard. Charles left
Richard all his property and Vernons on the condition that I always lived
here--till I died, and that's how it is. I'm not Richard's aunt, it's only
a name he gives me--I'm only just an old piece of furniture left with the
house to him. I'm so fond of the place, it would kill me to leave it;
places grow like that round one, though I'm sure I don't know why."

"I don't wonder at you loving Vernons," said Phyl. "I was just the same
about our place in Ireland, Kilgobbin--I thought it would kill me to leave
it."

"Tell me about it," said Miss Pinckney. Phyl told, or tried to tell.

Looking back, she found between herself and Ireland the sunlight of
Charleston, the garden with the magnolia trees where the red bird was
singing and the jessamine casting its perfume. Ireland looked very far
away and gloomy, desolate as Kilgobbin without its master and with the
mist of winter among the trees.

All that was part of the Past gone forever, and so great was the magic of
this new place that she found herself recognising with a little chill that
this Past had separated itself from her, that her feeling towards it was
faintly tinged by something not unlike indifference.

"Well," said Miss Pinckney, when she had finished, "it must be a beautiful
old place, though I can't seem to see it-- You see, I've never been in
Ireland and I can't picture it any more than the new Jerusalem. Now Dinah
knows all about the new Jerusalem, from the golden slippers right up she
sees it--I can't. Hav