pring had not come with such serene neglect to the other two
of us three. Against advice, remonstrance, and entreaty from her good
friends, Letty Allis had married Henry Malden, and, in attire more
tasteful, but quite as far from Quakerism as Josephine had predicted,
beamed upon the inhabitants of Slepington from the bow-window, or open
door, of a cottage very _ornee_ indeed; while the odor of a tolerable
cigar served as Mr. Malden's exponent, wherever he abode. And to Josephine
had come a loss no annual resurrection should repair: her mother was dead;
she, too, was orphaned,--for she had never known her father; her only
sister was married far away; and I kept an old promise in going to her for
a year's stay at least.

Aunt Boyle's property had consisted chiefly in large cotton mills owned by
herself and her twin brother,--who, dying before her, left her all his own
share in them. These mills were on a noisy little river in the western
part of Massachusetts,--in a valley, narrow, but picturesque, and so far
above the level of the sea that the air was keen and pure as among
mountains. Mrs. Boyle had removed here from Baltimore, a few years before
her own death, that she might be with her brother through his long and
fatal illness; and, finding her health improved by change of air, had
occupied his house ever since, until one of those typhoid fevers that
infest such river-gorges at certain seasons of the year entered the
village about the mills, when, in visiting the sick, she took the epidemic
herself and died. Josephine still retained the house endeared to her by
sad and glad recollections; and it was there I found her, when, after
renting the whole of my little tenement at Slepington, I betook myself to
Valley Mills at her request.

The cottage where she lived was capacious enough for her wants, and though
plain, even to an air of superciliousness, without, was most luxurious
within,--made to use and live in; for Mr. Brown, her uncle, was an
Englishman, and had never arrived at that height of Transatlantic _ton_
which consists in shrouding and darkening all the pleasant rooms in the
house, and skulking through life in the basement and attic. Sunshine,
cushions, and flowers were Mr. Brown's personal tastes; and plenty of
these characterized the cottage. A green terrace between hill and river
spread out before the door for lawn and garden, and a tiny conservatory
abutted upon the brink of the terrace slope, from a bay-wi