, dead. They say that the coach still
travels the road just before some calamity to the family,--a phantom
coach which floats along in shadow, turning the air about it to mist
that chills the marrow in the bones of the unfortunate who sees it. I am
going to see it myself some day, the real coach, I mean, in which this
tragic event took place. It is still in the stable, Charles tells me. I
wonder if I will have the courage to sit where that poor devoted mother
breathed out her miserable existence. I shall endeavor to do so if only
to defy the fate which seems to be closing in upon me.

Charles is an able lawyer, but his argument in favor of close bonnets
_versus_ bewitching little pokes with a rose or two in front, was very
weak, I thought, to-day. He seemed to think so himself, after a while;
for when, as the only means of convincing him of the weakness of the
cause he was advocating, I ran up-stairs and put on a poke similar to
the aforesaid, he retracted at once and let the case go by default. For
which I, and the poke, made suitable acknowledgments, to the great
amusement of papa Knollys, who was on my side from the first.

Not much going on to-day. Yet I have never felt merrier. Oh, ye hideous,
bare old walls! Won't I make you ring if----

* * * * *

I won't have it! I won't have that smooth, persistent hypocrite pushing
his way into my presence, when my whole heart and attention belong to a
man who would love me if he only could get his own leave to do so.
Obadiah Trohm has been here to-day, on one pretext or another, three
times. Once he came to bring some very choice apples--as if I cared for
apples! The second time he had a question of great importance, no doubt,
to put to Charles, and as Charles was in my company, the whole interview
lasted, let us say, a good half-hour at least. The third time he came,
it was to see _me_, which, as it was now evening, meant talk, talk, talk
in the great drawing-room, with just a song interpolated now and then,
instead of a cosy chat in the window-seat of the pretty Flower Parlor,
with only one pair of ears to please and one pair of eyes to watch.
Master Trohm was intrusive, and, if no one felt it but myself, it is
because Charles Knollys has set himself up an ideal of womanhood to
which I am a contradiction. But that will not affect the end. A woman
may be such a contradiction and yet win, if her heart is in the struggle
and she has, besides,