that I am a poor frail creature, and do not
hurt me. Let me remain still in my charmed circle where I have always
lived, and where no unpleasant reality has ever entered." The quaint
peacock screen, brought from China by old Jonathan, cast a shadow on her
cheek, which was flushed to the colour of a faded rose leaf.

"Yes, the girl is an orphan, it is very sad," she replied, and her tone
added, "but what can I do about it? I am a woman and should know nothing
of such matters!"

"Was she mentioned in my uncles's will, do you remember?"

His handsome, well-coloured face had taken a sudden firmness of outline,
and even the sagging flesh of his chin appeared to harden with the
resolve of the moment. Across his forehead, under the fine dark hair
which had worn thin on the temples, three frowning wrinkles leaped out
as if in response to some inward pressure.

"There was something--I can't remember just what it was--Mr.
Chamberlayne will tell you about it when he comes down to-morrow to talk
over business with Kesiah. They keep all such things away from me out of
consideration for my heart. But I've never doubted for an instant that
your uncle did everything that was just and generous in the matter. He
sent the girl to a good school in Applegate, I remember, and there was
a bequest of some sort, I believe--something that she comes into on her
twenty-first birthday."

"She isn't twenty-one then, is she?"

"I don't know, Jonathan, I really can't remember."

"Perhaps Aunt Kesiah can tell me something about her?"

"Oh, she can and she will--but Kesiah is so violent in all her opinions!
I had to ask her never to mention Brother Jonathan's name to me because
she made me quite ill once by some dreadful hints she let fall about
him."

She leaned back wearily as if the conversation had exhausted her, while
the peacock firescreen slipped from her hand and dropped on the white
fur rug at her feet.

"If you'll call Kesiah, Jonathan, I'll go upstairs for a rest," she said
gently, yet with a veiled reproach. "The journey tired me, but I forgot
it in the pleasure of seeing you."

All contrition at once, he hastily summoned Kesiah from the storeroom,
and between them, with several solicitous maids in attendance, they
carried the fragile little lady up to her chamber, where a fire of
resinous pine was burning in the big colonial fireplace.

An hour afterwards, when Kesiah had seen her sister peacefully dozing,
she went, for the f