er mind
wandering expeditions, a state of soul that sometimes carried her into the
past, sometimes into the future, that led her anywhere and to the wrapt,
inward contemplation of all sorts of things and subjects from the doings
of the Heavenly Host to the misdoings of Dinah.

She talked on these expeditions.

"Well, I'm sure and I'm sure I don't know what folk want with the luggage
they carry about with them nowadays-- The old folk didn't. Not Saratoga
trunks, anyhow. I remember 'swell as if it was yesterday way back in 1880,
when Richard's father and mother were married, old Simon Mascarene--he
belonged to your mother's lot, the Mascarenes of Virginia-- He came to the
wedding, and all he brought was a carpet-bag. I can see the roses on it
still. He wore a beaver hat. They'd been out of fashion for years and
years. So was he. Twenty dollars apiece they cost him, and his clothes
were the same. Looked like a picture out of Dickens. Your grandmother was
there, too, came from Richmond for the wedding, drove here in her own
carriage. She and Simon were the last of the Virginia Mascarenes and they
looked it. Seems to me some people never can be new nor get away from
their ancestors. If you'd dressed Simon in kilts it wouldn't have made any
difference, much, he'd still have been Simon Mascarene of Virginia, just
as stiff and fine and proud and old-fashioned."

"It seems funny that my people should have been the Virginia Mascarenes,"
said Phyl, "because--because--well, I feel as if my people had always
lived here--this feels like home--I don't know what it is, but just as I
came into the street outside there I seemed to know it, and this house--"

"Why, God bless my soul," said Miss Pinckney, whose eyes had just fallen
on the girl's empty cup, "here have I been talking and talking, and you
waiting for some more tea. Why didn't you ask, child?--What were you
saying? The Virginia Mascarenes-- Oh, they often came here, and your
mother knew this house as well as Planters. That was the name of their
house in Richmond. But what I can't get over is your likeness to Juliet.
She might have been your sister to look at you both--and she dead all
these years."

"Who was Juliet?"

"She was the girl who died," said Miss Pinckney. "You know, although
Richard calls me Aunt, I am not really his aunt; it's just an easy name
for an old woman who is an interloper, a Pinckney adrift. It was this way
I came in. Long before the Civil War, the