chamber, a low-storied little room, which looked into the side yard and
the great branches of an elm-tree. She never sat in the old wooden
rocking-chair except on Sundays like this; it belonged to the day of
rest and to happy meditation. She wore her plain black dress and a
clean white apron, and held in her lap a little wooden box, with a
brass ring on top for a handle. She was past sixty years of age and
looked even older, but there was the same look on her face that it had
sometimes worn in girlhood. She was the same Martha; her hands were
old-looking and work-worn, but her face still shone. It seemed like
yesterday that Helena Vernon had gone away, and it was more than forty
years.

War and peace had brought their changes and great anxieties, the face
of the earth was furrowed by floods and fire, the faces of mistress and
maid were furrowed by smiles and tears, and in the sky the stars shone
on as if nothing had happened. The village of Ashford added a few
pages to its unexciting history, the minister preached, the people
listened; now and then a funeral crept along the street, and now and
then the bright face of a little child rose above the horizon of a
family pew. Miss Harriet Pyne lived on in the large white house, which
gained more and more distinction because it suffered no changes, save
successive repaintings and a new railing about its stately roof. Miss
Harriet herself had moved far beyond the uncertainties of an anxious
youth. She had long ago made all her decisions, and settled all
necessary questions; her scheme of life was as faultless as the
miniature landscape of a Japanese garden, and as easily kept in order.
The only important change she would ever be capable of making was the
final change to another and a better world; and for that nature itself
would gently provide, and her own innocent life.

Hardly any great social event had ruffled the easy current of life
since Helena Vernon's marriage. To this Miss Pyne had gone, stately in
appearance and carrying gifts of some old family silver which bore the
Vernon crest, but not without some protest in her heart against the
uncertainties of married life. Helena was so equal to a happy
independence and even to the assistance of other lives grown strangely
dependent upon her quick sympathies and instinctive decisions, that it
was hard to let her sink her personality in the affairs of another.
Yet a brilliant English match was not without its attr