dreams.
Her peaceful days were passed in a kind of picturesque haze, like the
mist that, seeming in itself a rosy light, sometimes veils a tranquil
September sunset.

She was evidently very happy, but it was equally evident that she did
not know it. From words she let drop now and then I saw that she still
imagined she was bearing the heavy cross of her mutilated youth. But to
me it seemed as if some tender hand had lifted it from her shoulder.

"Aunt Emmy," I said, yielding to an ignoble curiosity in the second week
of my visit, as we were picking the lavender together, "when Uncle
Thomas died, I had thought I should hear of your marrying Mr. Kingston."

"I also hoped it, my dear," said Aunt Emmy, snipping the lavender into a
little basket, held in a loose white-gloved hand.

I dared not look at her.

"Mr. Kingston has not written," she said after a moment.

"But did you write and tell him you were free, and still in the same
mind?"

"I did not. I thought it might be awkward for him in case he were--after
all these years--contemplating some other possibility. I did not want to
embarrass him. But your Uncle Thomas's death was in all the papers, and
many of his relations are acquainted with us. I have no doubt the news
reached him."

Of course it had. I had felt that it was hardly to be expected that Mr.
Kingston should have kept after twenty years, more than twenty years,
the same vivid memory of his early love that she had done. His silence
proved that he had not done so. I looked at Aunt Emmy. How pretty and
graceful and remote she looked, and how young her face was under the
shadow of her charming garden hat, tied with a soft black ribbon under
her chin. As long as she was not confronted with any one really young,
she had no look of age. It was difficult to believe that she was
forty-four. And he must be forty-six. It was too late. Middle-aged
marriages are risky affairs enough, when the Rubicon of forty is within
sight. But when it has been passed----!

As I looked at her I hoped with all my heart that he would not come back
to disturb her peace of mind and dislocate her life afresh.

But, astonishing to say, he did come back; and there was some adequate
reason, I have forgotten exactly what, for his not coming earlier. At
any rate, it was adequate.

When I came down to breakfast a few days later, Aunt Emmy held a letter
towards me with a shaking hand. Her lips trembled. She could not
articulate.

"A