ting up the piazzas and
columns with their bloom. I recognized a change at once in the aspect of
the place: more windows and doors were open than formerly, and the
porticoes showed signs of careless occupancy with their chairs and
afghans, tables and a litter of books, papers and work. I stood before
the door, gazing through the wide-columned vista of the hall, and the
infinite seemed open before my eyes as I saw the blue and opal-tinted
sea. But still there was no sound except the murmur from the shore, and
nothing stirred except the sunbeams as they climbed the carved
balustrade of the great staircase and gleamed on the frozen faces of a
marble group in a niche. I did not ring at first, for it seemed as if my
mother or Helen must come out--that they were close at hand, picking
roses on the terrace or descending from their rooms. But it was Mills
who presently issued from the dining-room and saw me. He greeted me as
if I were one of the family, and ushered me into the library as he had
done at the time of my first visit years before.

Sitting there quietly, I seemed for the first time to realize the fact
of old Mr. Raymond's death. I saw his chair by the fireplace, and the
low seat on which Helen and I had sat together many and many a time. I
had not grieved at the old man's death, but had felt that weeping for
the dead might sometimes be a less dreary task than bearing with the
living; yet here I could not see these beautiful inanimate things, once
his intimate surroundings, without a thrill of regret that he was gone.

A shadow fell across the doorway, and a young girl came in, one of the
sunset gleams reflected from some of the endless mirrors of the house
falling on her and lighting up her face. My first thought was, "She is
almost a woman:" my second was, "I had never expected she would be so
beautiful."

We had not spoken yet: she ran up to me eagerly and looked into my face,
and I clasped her hands. When I saw that she was crying there seemed to
me but one way of greeting the child. I took her in my arms and kissed
her. It seemed strange, I think, to neither of us that we should meet in
this way. But when we looked at each other now, I felt a curious glow
over my face, and she hung her head and was blushing vividly, as I had
never suspected the pale little Helen I had once known so well, with her
aspect of almost severe purity, could ever blush. There was a new sort
of beauty about her: a soft richness of tint