and aspirations whose brief
blossoming had lent a transient freshness to her days. She wondered
now how she could ever have supposed that Mr. Ramy's visits had another
cause than the one Miss Mellins suggested. Had not the sight of Evelina
first inspired him with a sudden solicitude for the welfare of the
clock? And what charms but Evelina's could have induced him to repeat
his visit? Grief held up its torch to the frail fabric of Ann Eliza's
illusions, and with a firm heart she watched them shrivel into ashes;
then, rising from her knees full of the chill joy of renunciation, she
laid a kiss on the crimping pins of the sleeping Evelina and crept under
the bedspread at her side.

V

During the months that followed, Mr. Ramy visited the sisters with
increasing frequency. It became his habit to call on them every Sunday
evening, and occasionally during the week he would find an excuse for
dropping in unannounced as they were settling down to their work beside
the lamp. Ann Eliza noticed that Evelina now took the precaution of
putting on her crimson bow every evening before supper, and that she
had refurbished with a bit of carefully washed lace the black silk
which they still called new because it had been bought a year after Ann
Eliza's.

Mr. Ramy, as he grew more intimate, became less conversational, and
after the sisters had blushingly accorded him the privilege of a pipe he
began to permit himself long stretches of meditative silence that
were not without charm to his hostesses. There was something at once
fortifying and pacific in the sense of that tranquil male presence in
an atmosphere which had so long quivered with little feminine doubts and
distresses; and the sisters fell into the habit of saying to each other,
in moments of uncertainty: "We'll ask Mr. Ramy when he comes," and of
accepting his verdict, whatever it might be, with a fatalistic readiness
that relieved them of all responsibility.

When Mr. Ramy drew the pipe from his mouth and became, in his turn,
confidential, the acuteness of their sympathy grew almost painful to the
sisters. With passionate participation they listened to the story of his
early struggles in Germany, and of the long illness which had been the
cause of his recent misfortunes. The name of the Mrs. Hochmuller (an old
comrade's widow) who had nursed him through his fever was greeted with
reverential sighs and an inward pang of envy whenever it recurred in his
biographica