ystery_, and all
that--yes--so that's how I came to speak of him, I suppose. One gets
_ideas_ of a person that way sometimes, don't you know, though they may
never have actually _seen_ them at all? Oh! when I was a _young_ thing,
I was just full of those--_ideals, I_ used to call them--oh, you know
all about it, I _dare_ say!"

"He met with a very serious accident just before I came away," said
Cornelia to the ear-trumpet; "he stopped Dolly--our horse--she was
running away with papa in the wagon. He saved papa beautifully, but he
was dreadfully hurt--his collar-bone was broken, and he was kicked, and
almost killed. He's at our house now, and papa's taking care of him."

At this information Aunt Margaret became very white, or rather
bloodless, in the face. She allowed the ear-trumpet to hang by its
silver chain from her neck, and, reaching out her hand to a recess in
the writing-table at which she sat, she drew forth a small ebony box,
set in silver, and carved all over with little figures in bass-relief.
Opening it, she took out a few grains of some dark substance which the
box contained, and slipped them eagerly into her large mouth, Cornelia
watched her out of the corner of her eyes, and, being a physician's
daughter, she drew her own conclusions.

"Ho, ho! that's where your sick-headaches, and yellow complexion, and
nervousness, and weak eyes, come from, is it? You'd better look out!
that's morphine, or opium, or some such thing, I know; and papa says
that old ladies like you, who use such drugs, are liable to get insane
after a while, and I shouldn't be a bit surprised if you were to become
insane, Aunt Margaret!"

This agreeable prophecy, being confined solely to Cornelia's thoughts,
was naturally inaudible to Mrs. Vanderplanck. She murmured something
about her doctor having prescribed medicine to be taken at that hour,
and then, the medicine appearing to have an immediate and salutary
effect, she found her color and her voice again, and took up the
conversation.

"Shocking! oh, shocking! _so_ sad for the poor young man--no
father--no--no mother there to care for him. He _it_ an orphan, is he
not?--no relatives, I suppose--no one who _belongs_ to him, poor boy!
Dear, dear!--but he's _not_ fatally injured, is he?--not fatally?"

"Oh, no," replied Cornelia, whose opinion of Aunt Margaret's character
was much improved by this evidently sincere sympathy in the suffering of
some one she had never seen--"oh, no; p