ecome Mrs. Dr. Ross this winter."

[1] Here a line is missing.

CHAPTER XX.

A Quiet Household--Absence of Marguerite and Gabrielle--Amusing Letters
from them--A Gypsy Fortune-teller--Marguerite returns with a
Visitor--The Harvest Moon--Preparing for Company--Arranging the Blue
Room--Intense Anticipation--"'He Cometh Not,' She Said."

_August 14_.

Our little household has been unusually quiet for the past week, owing
to the absence of the two lively members of the family, Marguerite and
Gabrielle, who are visiting friends by the seaside and upon the shores
of Seneca Lake. Their absence makes a great change in the ways of the
household, for Ida and I have not the high spirits and constant flow of
words that distinguish our sisters, and we spend our time as quietly
and busily as two little nuns, not even dreaming of asking any one to
come up from the city and pass Saturday with us. We miss them very
much, especially at the table, and in the half hour after tea, when we
always gather about mamma's sofa for a little chat, before separating
for our evening's work--writing, practising, or whatever it may be.

Ida and I usually form the audience upon these occasions, and listen
with great interest to Marguerite's entertaining stories of adventures
at home and abroad, or Gabrielle's droll mimicry of the strongly marked
characteristics of some one she has met or dreamed of. Sometimes the
candles are extinguished, and a ghost story is told, for Gabrielle is
fond of the supernatural, and her dramatic style of narration adds much
to our enjoyment; indeed, chancing the other day to read in a magazine
one of her pet stories, I was astonished to find how tame it sounded.

Ida and I find, however, some compensation for our sisters' absence in
their sprightly letters, which arrive while we are at the tea-table.
Marguerite writes every day, and her letters are inimitable in their
humor and _esprit_, for she writes exactly as she talks. She is
visiting some friends whose acquaintance we made in Paris, and who have
a beautiful country-seat upon Long Island. Her letters are filled with
accounts of drives, fishing-parties, and excursions in yachts and
row-boats, and, lastly, of meeting a _real_ gypsy encampment (not the
time-honored one in "Trovatore") and having her fortune told.

A gypsy woman, it seems, stopped the carriage as Marguerite was driving
past, and expressed so strong a desire to "unveil the future for t