lonely widowhood. She looked like a person with
a history, strangers often said (as if we each did not have a
history); and her own unbroken reserve about this romance of hers gave
everybody the more respect for it.

The Longfield people paid willing deference to Miss Dane: her family
had always been one that could be liked and respected, and she was the
last that was left in the old home of which she was so fond. This was
a high, square house, with a row of pointed windows in its roof, a
peaked porch in front, with some lilac-bushes around it; and down by
the road was a long, orderly procession of poplars, like a row of
sentinels standing guard. She had lived here alone since her father's
death, twenty years before. She was a kind, just woman, whose
pleasures were of a stately and sober sort; and she seemed not unhappy
in her loneliness, though she sometimes said gravely that she was the
last of her family, as if the fact had a great sadness for her.

She had some middle-aged and elderly cousins living at a distance, and
they came occasionally to see her; but there had been no young people
staying in the house for many years until this summer, when the
daughter of her youngest cousin had written to ask if she might come
to make a visit. She was a motherless girl of twenty, both older and
younger than her years. Her father and brother, who were civil
engineers, had taken some work upon the line of a railway in the far
Western country. Nelly had made many long journeys with them before
and since she had left school, and she had meant to follow them now,
after she had spent a fortnight with the old cousin whom she had not
seen since her childhood. Her father had laughed at the visit as a
freak, and had warned her of the dulness and primness of Longfield;
but the result was that the girl found herself very happy in the
comfortable home. She was still her own free, unfettered, lucky, and
sunshiny self; and the old house was so much pleasanter for the
girlish face and life, that Miss Horatia had, at first timidly and
then most heartily, begged her to stay for the whole summer, or even
the autumn, until her father was ready to come East. The name of Dane
was very dear to Miss Horatia, and she grew fonder of her guest. When
the village-people saw her glance at the girl affectionately, as they
sat together in the family-pew of a Sunday, or saw them walking
together after tea, they said it was a good thing for Miss Horatia;
ho