," said Doro, coming listlessly to the
table when all was ready. He drank some coffee, broke a piece of bread,
and then went back to his guitar; the honey-cakes he did not even
notice.

One more effort remained. Going softly into the parlor during the
morning, Miss Elisabetha opened the piano, and, playing over the prelude
to "The Proud Ladye," began to sing in her very best style, giving the
flourishes with elaborate art, scarcely a note without a little step
down from the one next higher; these airy descents, like flights of
fairy stairs, were considered very high art in the days of Monsieur
Vocard. She was in the middle of "a-weeping and a-weeping," when Doro
rushed into the room. "O aunt," he cried, "please, please do not sing!
Indeed, I can not bear it. We have been all wrong about our music; I can
not explain it, but I feel it--I know it. If you could only hear her!
Come with me to-morrow and hear her, dear aunt, and then you will
understand what I mean."

Left to herself again, Miss Elisabetha felt a great resolve come to her.
She herself would go and see this stranger, and grind her to powder! She
murmured these words over several times, and derived much comfort from
them.

With firm hands she unlocked the cedar chest which had come with her
from the city seventeen years before; but the ladies of the Daarg family
had not been wont to change their attire every passing fashion, and the
robe she now drew forth was made in the style of full twenty-five years
previous--a stiff drab brocade flowered in white, two narrow flounces
around the bottom of the scant skirt, cut half low in the neck with a
little bertha, the material wanting in the lower part standing out
resplendent in the broad leg-of-mutton sleeves, stiffened with buckram.
Never had the full daylight of Beata seen this precious robe, and Miss
Elisabetha herself considered it for a moment with some misgivings as to
its being too fine for such an occasion. But had not Doro spoken of
"velvet" and "embroideries"? So, with solemnity, she arrayed herself,
adding a certain Canton-crape scarf of a delicate salmon color, and a
Leghorn bonnet with crown and cape, which loomed out beyond her face so
that the three curls slanted forward over the full ruche to get outside,
somewhat like blinders. Thus clad, with her slippers, her bag on her
arm, and lace mits on her hands, Miss Elisabetha surveyed herself in the
glass. In the bag were her handkerchief, an ancient sme