curls were faded
and cast lighter shadows over thinner cheeks, one could more easily
attribute the dimness and thinness to the lack of one's own memory
than to change in her.

The garden was the same, sweetening with the ardor of pinks and
mignonette, the tasted breaths of thyme and lavender, like
under-thoughts of reason, and the pungent evidence of box.

Lucina looked out of the green gloom of the summer-house at the same
old carnival of flowers, swarming as lightly as if untethered by
stems, upon wings of pink and white and purpling blue, blazing out to
sight as with a very rustle of color from the hearts of green bushes
and the sides of tall green-sheathed stalks, in spikes and plumes,
and soft rosettes of silken bloom. Even the yellow cats of Miss
Camilla's famous breed, inheriting the love of their ancestors for
following the steps of their mistress, came presently between the box
rows with the soft, sly glide of the jungle, and established
themselves for a siesta on the arbor bench.

Lucina was glad that it was all so like what it had been, even to the
yellow cats, seeming scarcely more than a second rendering of a tune,
and it made it possible for her to open truthfully and easily upon
her plan. She herself, whose mind was so changed from its old
childish habit of simple outlook and waiting into personal effort for
its own ends, and whose body was so advanced in growth of grace, was
perhaps the most altered of all. However, there was much of the child
left in her.

"Aunt Camilla," said she, in almost the same tone of timid
deprecation which the little Lucina of years before might have used.

Camilla looked up, with gentle inquiry, from her portfolio.

"I have been thinking," said Lucina, bending low over her embroidery
that her aunt might not see the pink confusion of her face, which she
could not, after all, control, "how I came here and spent the
afternoon, once, years ago; do you remember?"

"You came here often--did you not, dear?"

"Yes," said Lucina, "but that once in particular, Aunt Camilla?"

"I fear I do not remember, dear," said Camilla, whose past had been
for years a peaceful monotone as to her own emotions, and had so
established a similar monotone of memory.

"Don't you remember, Aunt Camilla? I came first with a stent to knit
on a garter, and we sat out here. Then the yellow cats came, and
father had been fishing, and he brought some speckled trout,
and--then--the Edwards boy--"