are utterly mistaken about Mr. Castine. Alas!
he was no lover at all.') 'But although Mr. Castine was a splendid man
in every way, he was not a bold lover like Garrett Bridges, and after a
while he seemed to get tired and went off to travel. Not very long after
that Bridges went off, too. I think perhaps he had received part of the
inheritance he was expecting; but I am not sure about that. Anyway, he
went. And then my Aunt Amanda had no lover but me.

"'Very soon her health began to fail, and this went on for some time,
and nothing did her any good. At last she took to her bed. It seemed to
me the weaker and thinner she got the more beautiful she became, and I
did everything I could for her, which, of course, was not any good. I
remember very well that at this time she never lectured me about
anything; but she sometimes mentioned Rebecca Hendricks, always to the
effect that she was a very strange girl, and that she could not help
thinking her husband, if she ever got one, would be a man who ought to
be pitied. I think she was afraid I might marry her; but she need not
have worried herself about that--I never had the slightest idea of any
such nonsense.' ('But I had every reason to suppose you had such an
idea,' said Miss Amanda, 'considering I thought you had tried to run
away with her.')

"'Well,' said the old gentleman, 'there is not much more of the story.
My Aunt Amanda died, and our family was in great grief for a long time;
but none of them grieved as much as I did.' (If Miss Amanda could have
embraced her dear nephew John, she would have done so that minute.)
'Then, greatly to our surprise, Randolph Castine suddenly came home. He
had heard of my Aunt Amanda's dangerous condition, and he had hurried
back to see her and to tell her something before she died. He told my
mother, to whom he confided everything, that he had been passionately in
love with my Aunt Amanda for a long time, but that he had been so sure
she was going to marry Mr. Bridges that he had never given her any
reason to suppose he cared for her, which I said then, and I say now,
was a very poor way of managing love business. If he had spoken,
everything would have been all right, and my Aunt Amanda might have been
living now; there are plenty of people who live to be ninety. I am
positively sure, now, that she was just as much in love with him as he
was with her.'

"Miss Amanda now suffered a great and sudden pain: she seemed to exist
only in h