t's,
would crumple and wrinkle as softly as old rose leaves, and, like her
aunt, in this guise she would walk her path of life alone.

Lucina seemed to see, as through a long, converging tunnel of years,
her solitary self, miniatured clearly in the distance, gliding on,
like Camilla, with that sweet calm of motion of one who has left the
glow of joy behind, but feels her path trend on peace.

"I dare say it may be just as well not to marry, after all," reasoned
Lucina, "a great many people are not married. Aunt Camilla seems very
happy, happier than many married women whom I have seen. She has
nothing to disturb her. I shall be happy in the way she is. When I am
such an old maid that my father and mother will have died, because
they were too old to live longer, I will leave this house, because I
could not bear to stay here with them away, and go to Aunt Camilla's.
She will be dead, too, by that time, and her house will be mine. Then
I, in my cap and spectacles, will sit afternoons in the summer-house,
and--perhaps--he--he will be older than I then, and white-haired, and
maybe stooping and walking with a cane--perhaps--he will come often,
and sit with me there, and we will remember everything together."

In all her forecasts for a single life, Lucina could not quite
eliminate her lover, though she could her husband. She and Jerome
were always to be friends, of course, and he was to come and see her.
Lucina, when once Jerome had begun to visit her, never contemplated
the possibility of his ever ceasing to do so. He did not come
regularly--the wisdom of that was tacitly understood between them;
since there was to be no marriage, there could necessarily be no
courtship. There was never any sitting up together in the north
parlor, after the fashion of village lovers. Jerome merely spent an
hour or two in the sitting-room with the Squire and his wife and
Lucina. Sometimes he and the Squire talked politics and town affairs
while Lucina and her mother sewed. Sometimes the four played whist,
or bezique, for in those days Jerome was learning to take a hand at
cards, but he had always Mrs. Merritt for his partner, and the Squire
Lucina. Indeed, Lucina would have considered herself highly false and
treacherous had she manifested an inclination to be the partner of
any other than her father. Sometimes the Squire sat smoking and
dozing, and sometimes he was away, and in those cases Mrs. Merritt
sewed, and Jerome and Lucina played