ch Miss Willy was making, she grew as excited
as if she had been speaking of the sacred white satin she had worn as a
bride. So little was needed to make her happy--that was the pathos! She
was satisfied with the crumbs of life, and yet they were denied her.
Though she had been alone ever since Lucy's wedding, she accepted his
belated visit as thankfully as if it were a gratuitous gift. "It is so
good of you to come down, dear, when you are needed every minute in New
York," she murmured, with a caressing touch on his arm, and, looking at
her, he was reminded of Mrs. Pendleton's tremulous pleasure in the
sweets that came to her on little trays from her neighbours. Once she
had said eagerly, "It will be so nice to see Miss Oldcastle, Oliver,"
and he had answered in a constrained tone which he tried to make light
and casual, "I am not sure that the part is going to suit her."

Then he had changed the subject abruptly by rising from the table and
asking her to let him see her latest letter from Harry.

The next morning he went out after breakfast to consult Cyrus about some
investments, while Virginia laid out the lengths of brocade on the bed
in the spare room, and sat down to wait for the arrival of the
dressmaker. Outside, the trees were still white from the storm, and the
wind, blowing through them, made a dry crackling sound as if it were
rattling thorns in a forest. Though it was intensely cold, the sunshine
fell in golden bars over the pavement and filled the town with a
dazzling brilliancy through which the little seamstress was seen
presently making her way. Alert, bird-like, consumed with her insatiable
interest in other people, she entered, after she had removed her bonnet
and wraps, and began to spread out her patterns. It was twenty-odd years
since she had made the white satin dress in which Virginia was married,
yet she looked hardly a day older than she had done when she knelt at
the girl's feet and envied her happiness while she pinned up the shining
train. Failing love, she had filled her life with an inextinguishable
curiosity; and this passion, being independent of the desires of others,
was proof alike against disillusionment and the destructive processes of
time.

"So Mr. Treadwell has come home," she remarked, with a tentative
flourish of the scissors. "I declare he gets handsomer every day that
he lives. It suits him somehow to fill out, or it may be that I'm
partial to fat like my poor mother befor