window and her voice fell.

"I didn't go to," she answered. "It was like this. That last time she
came to see me--to tell me how ill she was and how Lucien was going to
take her away--I'd been lookin' at the little clothes I'd got ready
for--it." The tears began to roll fast down her cheeks. "Oh, Miss
Starkweather! they was lyin' on the bed--an' she saw 'em an' turned as
white as a sheet."

"Ugh!" the sound broke from Miss Amory like a short, involuntary groan.

"She said she didn't know how people could _bear_ it," Susan hurried on,
"an' I said--just like you did--that they _had_ to bear it."

She suddenly hid her face in her arms.

"You were thinking of yourself," said Miss Amory. She felt and looked a
little sick.

"Yes," said Susan, "I was thinkin' of how it is when a girl's goin' to
have a child an' can't get away from it--can't--can't. She's got to go
through with it--an' no one can't save her. But I suppose it made her
think of her death that was comin'--her death that I b'lieve she knowed
she was struck for. When I'd said it she looked like some little hunted
animal dogs was after--that had run till its breath was gone an' its eyes
was startin' from its head. Her little chest went up an' down with
pantin'. I didn't wonder when I heard after that she'd dropped in the
street in a dead faint."

"Was that the day I picked her up as she lay on the pavement?" Miss Amory
asked.

Susan nodded, her face still hidden.

Old Miss Starkweather put out her hand and laid it on the girl's
shoulder.

"She has had time to forget," she said, rather as if she was out of
breath--"forget and grow quiet. She is dust by now--peaceful dust. Let
us--my good girl--let us remember that happy story of how she died."

"Yes," answered Susan, "in Italy--lying before the open window--with the
sunset all rosy in the sky."

But her head rested on her folded arms upon her knee, and she sobbed a
low, deep sob.

CHAPTER XVIII

Just before the breaking out of the Civil War, Delisleville had been
provided with a sensation in a piece of singularly unexpected good
fortune which befell one of its most prominent citizens. It was indeed
good fortune, wearing somewhat the proportions of a fairy tale, and that
such things could happen in Delisleville and to a citizen who possessed
its entire approval was considered vaguely to the credit of the town.

One of the facts which had always been counted as an added dignity to the
De Wil