nd carpet, from the wall-paper in obscure
arabesques of green and satiny white, appeared full of woodland
shadows. Miss Camilla, swaying her feather fan, served to set these
shadows slowly eddying with a motion of repose. She had dozed in her
chair, and her mind had lapsed into peaceful dreams before her niece
arrived. Now she sat beaming gently at her. "Do you feel refreshed,
dear?" she asked, when Lucina had finished her tumbler of
currant-jelly water.

"Yes, thank you, Aunt Camilla."

"I fear you were not strong enough to venture out in such heat, glad
as I am to see you, dear. Had you not better let 'Liza bring you a
pillow, and then you can lie down on the sofa and perhaps have a
little nap?"

"No, thank you, Aunt Camilla, I am not sleepy. I am quite well. I am
going to sit by the window and read."

With that Lucina rose, got a book bound in red and gold from the
stately mahogany table, and seated herself by the one window whose
shutters were not tightly closed. It was a north window, and only one
leaf of the upper half of the shutter was open. The aperture
disclosed, instead of burning sky, a thick screen of horse-chestnut
boughs. The great fan-like leaves almost touched the window-glass,
and tinted all the dim parallelogram of light.

Even Lucina's golden head and fair face acquired somewhat of this
prevailing tone of green, being transposed into another key of color.
All her golden lights, and her roses, were lost in a delicate green
pallor, which might have beseemed a sea-nymph. Her aunt, sitting
aloof in that same green shaft of day filtered through horse-chestnut
leaves, and also changed thereby, kept glancing at her uneasily. She
knew that her brother and his wife had been anxious lately about
Lucina. She ventured a few more gently solicitous remarks, which
Lucina met sweetly, still with a little impatience of weariness,
scarcely lifting her face from her book; then she ventured no more.

"The child does not like to have us so anxious over her," she
thought, with that unfailing courtesy and consideration which would
spare others though she torment herself thereby. She longed
exceedingly to offer Lucina a wineglass of a home-brewed cordial,
compounded from the rich juice of the blackberry, the finest of
French brandy, and sundry spices, which was her panacea, but she
abstained, lest it disturb her. Miss Camilla set a greater value upon
peace of mind than upon aught else.

Lucina bent her face over h