y were in
no measure to blame. They walked back through the dim, still woods;
and at the white gates of Jane's pleasant home Peter left her, and she
went on alone to meet Miss Abingdon.

It was late that night before the two sorrowful women went to bed; and
hardly was breakfast over in the morning before, with the restlessness
born of recent grief, Miss Abingdon was seeking anxiously to know what
she could do or what ought to be done.

'If,' she said, 'I felt that I could even be of use by going up to town
and choosing the servants' mourning, I should feel that I was doing
something.'

There were piles of patterns of black stuffs, which Miss Abingdon had
telegraphed for on the previous evening, lying in neat bundles on the
breakfast-table, and stamped with their several prices and the width of
the materials. Such things have often kept a woman sane in the first
despair of grief.

'How would it do?' she said, 'to have a little crape on the body and
not on the skirt?'

Jane replied that she thought it would do very nicely.

Poor Jane! her eyes were big with weeping, and she had lain awake the
greater part of the night mourning for her friend who was gone. Now,
as she tried to give her attention to her aunt and to the vexed
question of the propriety of crape on the body, she thought, with
girlish ingenuousness, that she wanted Peter more than she had ever
wanted him before, and that she could do nothing until she had seen
him. And across her grief came one great flash of joy as she realized
that in all her troubles and sorrows she would have him with her.

'There he is now,' said Miss Abingdon, 'coming up the drive! Jane, my
dear, how awfully ill Peter looks. Oh, my dear, you should have told
me how ill he looks!'

Jane went out to the hall door without speaking. 'What is wrong?' she
said briefly. 'Come into my sitting-room, Peter, and tell me what is
wrong.'

'I 'd rather be outside, if you don't mind,' said Peter, the primitive
man strong in him again.

There had been a storm in the night, after the unusual stillness of the
afternoon, accompanied by heavy rain. Now the sun shone fitfully, and
the disordered gardens and lawns were strewn with branches and
countless leaves which chased each other, bowling along on their edges
and dancing in mad eddies and circles.

'Let's get out of sight of the house,' said Peter; and they went into
the high-walled garden and sat down on one of Miss Abingdon's
che