en a little start, but had
become quiet again. When at last she spoke it was in a voice scarcely
audible.

"That cannot be. I know what you mean, but it cannot be.... He died
on the eve of his wedding. For my bridal clothes they made me black
garments instead. It is long ago, and now I wear neither black nor white,
but--" her hands made a gesture. Aunt Rachel always dressed as if to suit
a sorrow that Time had deprived of bitterness, in such a tender and
fleecy grey as one sees in the mists that lie like lawn over hedgerow
and copse early of a midsummer's morning. "Therefore," she resumed, "your
heart may see, but your eyes cannot see that which never was."

But there came a sudden note of masterfulness into the gipsy's voice.

"With my eyes--_these_ eyes," she repeated, pointing to them.

Aunt Rachel kept her own eyes obstinately on her knitting needles. "None
except I have seen it. It is not to be seen," she said.

The gipsy sat suddenly erect.

"It is not so. Keep still in your chair," she ordered, "and I will tell
you when--"

It was a curious thing that followed. As if all the will went out of
her, Aunt Rachel sat very still; and presently her hands fluttered and
dropped. The gipsy sat with her own hands folded over the mat on her
knees. Several minutes passed; then, slowly, once more that sweetest of
smiles stole over Aunt Rachel's cheeks. Once more her head dropped. Her
hands moved. Noiselessly on the rockers that the gipsy had padded with
felt the chair began to rock. Annabel lifted one hand.

"_Dovo se li_" she said. "It is there."

Aunt Rachel did not appear to hear her. With that ineffable smile still
on her face, she rocked....

Then, after some minutes, there crossed her face such a look as visits
the face of one who, waking from sleep, strains his faculties to
recapture some blissful and vanishing vision....

"_Jal_--it is gone," said the gipsy woman.

Aunt Rachel opened her eyes again. She repeated dully after Annabel:

"It is gone."

"Ghosts," the gipsy whispered presently, "are of the dead. Therefore it
must have lived."

But again Aunt Rachel shook her head. "It never lived."

"You were young, and beautiful?..."

Still the shake of the head. "He died on the eve of his wedding. They
took my white garments away and gave me black ones. How then could
it have lived?"

"Without the kiss, no.... But sometimes a woman will lie through her
life, and at the graveside still will lie.... Te