enter the house again. A light snow had fallen
upon the dead garden, covering its scarred face with white. Miss
Evelina noted quickly that her garden, too, was hidden as by chiffon.

A gust of wind made her shiver--or was it the veiled garden? Nerving
herself to her necessity, she took up her satchel and went up the path
as one might walk, with bared feet, up a ladder of swords. Each step
that took her nearer the house hurt her the more, but she was not of
those who cry out when hurt. She set her lips more firmly together and
continued upon her self-appointed way.

When she reached the house, she already had the key in her uncertain
fingers. The rusty lock yielded at length and the door opened noisily.
Her heart surged painfully as she entered the musty darkness. It was
so that Miss Evelina came home, after five-and-twenty years.

The thousand noises of an empty house greeted her discordantly. A
rattling window was answered by a creaking stair, a rafter groaned
dismally, and the scurrying feet of mice pattered across a distant
floor.

Fumbling in her satchel, Miss Evelina drew out a candle and a box of
matches. Presently there was light in the little house--a faint
glimmering light, which flickered, when the wind shook the walls, and
twinkled again bravely when it ceased.

She took off her wraps, and, through force of habit, pinned the
multitudinous folds of her veil to her hair, forgetting that at
midnight, and in her own house, there were none to see her face.

Then she made a fire, for the body must be warmed, though the heart is
dead, and the soul stricken dumb. She had brought with her a box
containing a small canister of tea, and she soon had ready a cup of it,
so strong that it was bitter.

With her feet upon the hearth and the single candle flickering upon the
mantel shelf, she sat in the lonely house and sipped her tea. Her
well-worn black gown clung closely to her figure, and the white chiffon
veil, thrown back, did not wholly hide her abundant hair. The horror
of one night had whitened Miss Evelina's brown hair at twenty, for the
sorrows of Youth are unmercifully keen.

"I have come back," she thought. "I have come back through that door.
I went out of it, laughing, at twenty. At forty-five, I have come
back, heart-broken, and I have lived.

"Why did I not die?" she questioned, for the thousandth time. "If
there had been a God in Heaven, surely I must have died."

The flames leaped