all done. Then Rose was gayer than before. He is one of
those people to whom you must allow moods,--when their sun shines,
dance, and when their vapors rise, sit in the shadow. Every variation of
the atmosphere affects him, though by no means uniformly; and so
sensitive is he, that, when connected with you by any intimate
_rapport_, even if but momentary, he almost divines your thoughts. He is
full of perpetual surprises. I am sure he was a nightingale before he
was Rose. An iridescence like sea-foam sparkled in him that evening, he
laughed as lightly as the little tinkling mass-bells at every moment,
and seemed to diffuse a rosy glow wherever he went in the room. Yet
gayety was not his peculiar specialty, and at length he sat before the
fire, and, taking Lu's scissors, commenced cutting bits of paper in
profiles. Somehow they all looked strangely like and unlike Mr. Dudley.
I pointed one out to Lu, and, if he had needed confirmation, her
changing color gave it. He only glanced at her askance, and then broke
into the merriest description of his life in Rome, of which he declared
he had not spoken to us yet, talking fast and laughing as gleefully as a
child, and illustrating people and localities with scissors and paper as
he went on, a couple of careless snips putting a whole scene before us.

The floor was well-strewn with such chips,--fountains, statues, baths,
and all the persons of his little drama,--when papa came in. He held an
open letter, and, sitting down, read it over again. Rose fell into
silence, clipping the scissors daintily in and out the white sheet
through twinkling intricacies. As the design dropped out, I caught
it,--a long wreath of honeysuckle-blossoms. Lu was humming a little
tune. Rose joined, and hummed the last bars, then bade us good-night.

"Yone," said papa, "your Aunt Willoughby is very ill,--will not recover.
She is my elder brother's widow; you are her heir. You must go and stay
with her."

Now it was very likely that just at this time I was going away to nurse
Aunt Willoughby! Moreover, illness is my very antipodes,--its nearness
is invasion,--we are utterly antipathetic,--it disgusts and repels me.
What sympathy can there be between my florid health, my rank, redundant
life, and any wasting disease of death? What more hostile than focal
concentration and obscure decomposition? You see, we cannot breathe the
same atmosphere. I banish the thought of such a thing from my feeling,
from my