she raised herself, shaking
off Rose's hand. "It's all right," said she; "I needn't have minded;
I know you didn't mean anything. It was just--the last straw,
and--when you said that about my wedding-clothes--"

"Oh, Charlotte, you did speak about them yourself first," Rose said,
deprecatingly.

"I did, so nobody else would," returned Charlotte. She wiped her
eyes, drooping her stained face away from her cousin with a kind of
helpless shame; then she smoothed her hair with the palms of her
hands. "I know you didn't mean any harm, Rose," she added, presently.
"I got my silk dress done last Wednesday; I wanted to tell you."
Charlotte tried to smile at Rose with her poor swollen lips and her
reddened eyes.

"I'm sorry I said anything," Rose repeated; "I ought to have known it
would make you feel bad, Charlotte."

"No, you hadn't. I was terrible silly. Don't you want to see my
dress, Rose?"

"Oh, Charlotte! you don't want to show it to me?"

"Yes, I do. I want you to see it--before I pack it away. It's in the
north chamber."

Rose followed Charlotte out of the room across the passageway to the
north chamber. Charlotte had had one brother, who had died some ten
years before, when he was twenty. The north chamber had been his
room, the bureau drawers were packed with his clothes, and the silk
hat which had been the pride of his early manhood hung on the nail
where he had left it, and also his Sunday coat. His mother would not
have them removed, but kept them there, with frequent brushings, to
guard against dust and moths.

Always when Charlotte entered this small long room, which was full of
wavering lines from its uneven floor and walls and ceiling and the
long arabesques on its old blue-and-white paper, whose green paper
curtains with fringed white dimity ones drooping over them were
always drawn, and in summertime when the windows were open undulated
in the wind, she had the sense of a presence, dim, but as positive as
the visions she had used to have of faces in the wandering design of
the old wall-paper when she had studied it in her childhood. Ever
since her brother's death she had had this sense of his presence in
his room; now she thought no more of it than of any familiar figure.
All the grief at his death had vanished, but she never entered his
old room that the thought of him did not rise up before her and stay
with her while she remained.

Now, when she opened the door, and the opposite green and whit