ouch as I entered the room, I saw that Sally was at my side.

"I've sent for Dr. Theophilus," she said. "There, put her on the
lounge."

Kneeling on the floor she began bathing Miss Matoaca's forehead with
water which somebody had brought. The General, his eyes very red and
bloodshot and his lower lip fallen into a senile droop, was trying
vainly to fan her with his pocket-handkerchief.

"We have always feared this would happen," said Sally, very quiet and
pale.

"She was talking to me yesterday about her heart," returned the General,
"and I didn't know what she meant."

He bent over, fanning her more violently with his silk handkerchief, and
on the lounge beneath, Miss Matoaca lay, very prim and maidenly, with
her skirt folded modestly about her ankles.

Dr. Theophilus, coming in with the messenger, bent over her for a long
minute.

"I always thought her sense of honour would kill her," he said at last
as he looked up.

CHAPTER XIX

SHOWS THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE

A week after Miss Matoaca's funeral, Sally met me in one of the secluded
streets by the Capitol Square, and we walked slowly up and down for an
hour in the November sunshine. In her black clothes she appeared to have
bloomed into a brighter beauty, a richer colour.

"Why can't I believe, Sally, that you will really marry me a week from
to-day?"

"A week from to-day. Just you and I in old Saint John's."

"And Miss Mitty, will she not come with you?"

"She refuses to let me speak your name to her. It would be hard to leave
her, Ben, if--if she hadn't been so bitter and stern to me for the last
year. I live in the same house with her and see nothing of her."

"I thought Miss Matoaca's death might have softened her."

"Nothing will soften her. Aunt Matoaca's death has hurt her terribly, I
know, but--and this is a dreadful thing to say--I believe it has hurt
her pride more than her heart. If the poor dear had died quietly in her
bed, with her prayer-book on the counterpane, Aunt Mitty would have
grieved for her in an entirely different way. She lives in a kind of
stained-glass seclusion, and anything outside of that seems to her
vulgar--even emotion."

"How I must have startled her."

"You startled her so that she has never had courage to face the effect.
Think what it must mean to a person who has lived sixty-five years in an
atmosphere of stained glass to be dragged outside and made to look at
the great common sun--"

A squirrel, run