it
was so faint! I used to go into the darkened chambers often, or even
stay for a while by myself in the unoccupied lower rooms, and I would
find this fragrance, and wonder if she were one of the old time
fairies, who could vanish at their own will and pleasure, and wonder,
too why she had come to the room. But I never met her at all.

That first visit to her and the strange fancy she had about the funeral
I have always remembered distinctly.

"I am glad you came," Madam repeated: "I was finding the day long. I
am all ready, you see. I shall place a little chair which is in the
next room, beside your cousin's seat for you. Mrs. Agnes is ill, I
hear; but I think she will come to-morrow. Have you heard any one say
if many guests are expected?"--"No, Madam," I answered, "no one has
told me;" and just then the thought flitted through my head that she
had said the evening before that all her friends were gone. Perhaps
she expected their ghosts: that would not be stranger than all the rest.

The open space where Lady Ferry had left room for her coffin began to
be a horror to me, and I wished Deborah would come back, or that my
hostess would open the shutters; and it was a great relief when she
rose and went into the adjoining room, bidding me follow her, and there
opened a drawer containing some old jewelry; there were also some queer
Chinese carvings, yellow with age,--just the things a child would
enjoy. I looked at them delightedly. This was coming back to more
familiar life; and I soon felt more at ease, and chattered to Lady
Ferry of my own possessions, and some coveted treasures of my mother's,
which were to be mine when I grew older.

Madam stood beside me patiently, and listened with a half smile to my
whispered admiration. In the clearer light I could see her better, and
she seemed older,--so old, so old! and my father's words came to me
again. She had not changed since he was a boy; living on and on, and
'the horror of an endless life in this world!' And I remembered what
Martha had said to me, and the consciousness of this mystery was a
great weight upon me of a sudden. Why was she living so long? and what
had happened to her? and how long could it be since she was a child?

There was something in her manner which made me behave, even in my
pleasure, as if her imagined funeral were there in reality, and as if,
in spite of my being amused and tearless, the solemn company of funeral
guests