."

"Hush," said grandma, with an uneasy glance toward the door; "do not
talk of rebels in this house; hadn't thee better run up and see
Clarissa?"

"If Miss Kitty pleases," spoke the voice of Pompey at the door, "will
she walk upstairs? Young madam wants to see her."

"Coming," said Kitty, kissing grandma fondly, and then following Pompey
as he marched gravely up to open the door of Mrs. Verplanck's
morning-room. It was a tiny apartment; for when Gulian Verplanck brought
his young bride home he had added a room to the wing below, and as it
greatly enlarged their bedroom, the happy idea had struck him to throw
up a partition, corner-ways, which formed an irregularly shaped room
opening on the passage, and gave Clarissa her own cherished den in that
great house of square rooms and high ceilings. In it she had placed all
her home belongings; her spinnet, which had been her mother's (brought
by sloop to New York from New Haven), found the largest space there, and
her grandmother's small spinning-wheel was in the corner near the
chimney-piece which Gulian had contrived to have put in lest his
delicate wife might suffer with cold.

Near the small log which blazed brightly on the hearth, in a low chair
made somewhat easy with cushions, sat a fair, fragile-looking, girlish
figure, in whose mournful dark eyes was something so pathetic that it
suggested the old-time prophecy that such "die young." Clarissa
Verplanck in that resembled none of her family, and the one reason for
her father's and aunt's anxiety about her was that she was thought the
image of a sister of her mother who fulfilled the prophecy. Be that as
it may, Clarissa was anything but a mournful person in general; her
spirits were somewhat prone to outrun her physical strength, and
therefore her sad little appeal for one of her sisters to cheer her had
come in the light of a demand to the Litchfield home, and alarmed them
more than anything else could have done.

"Kitty, Kitty," said Clarissa, holding out a welcoming hand to her
visitor, who seated herself on a cricket beside her, "why have you not
been in this four days? I am truly glad to see you, for ever since
Gulian and I dispatched our letters to my father I have been so cross
and impatient that I fear my good husband is beginning to tire of his
bargain, and lament a peevish wife."

"Heaven forgive you for the slander," retorted Kitty, laughing; "if ever
there was a husband who adored the ground you wa