eed in his case. And she
was now ministering to his last wants as she, Barbara Franklin,
arrived at mature age, with all the will, had neither the skill nor
the courage to minister, much as she owed him, so long as he had other
service. She was a captious, vindictive wretch to pick holes in Miss
Millar's armour, when she was striving so hard to atone to him for any
injury she had ever done him by delivering him from the jaws of death,
or at least smoothing his path to the grave.

The seasons had gone on till the late summer was merging into the early
autumn. It was the beginning of August, when the days are already not so
long as they have been; but, to make up for it, the lengthening nights
are balmier than they ever were, and the soft dusk remains full of
summer scents and sounds.

It was on such a night that you might imagine a young man, dying long
before his time, and yet after he has reached full manhood, and touched
the crown of bodily and mental vigour, without ever feeling the tide on
its turn.

The night was so warm that the windows of the room in which Dora and
Miss Franklin sat were wide open. There was a lamp lit within, but it
did not render the darkness without so great as to hide the outlines of
trees in the nearest garden, and even the dim shape of a bed of late
flowering, tall white lilies. Their heavy fragrance was on the air; and
if ever there is a fragrance which is solemn and tender like the love of
the dying and the memory of the dead, it is the all-pervading scent of
lilies.

Annie Millar could never have been so good a listener as Dora was when
Miss Franklin, constitutionally loquacious, relieved her distress, and
got rid of the dragging hours, by indulging in a long and affectionate
oration on Tom Robinson, the man who, not so many yards from them, was
lying as indifferent to praise and blame as when he first entered this
wonderful world, with all its joys and sorrows, from which he was ready
to depart.

"You know, he is not really my cousin," the womanly confidence began;
"the tie between us hardly counts--it is only that Mr. Robinson's
first wife was my mother's sister. But I always called Mr. Charles
Robinson and his second wife uncle and aunt. I might well do it, for
they were a good uncle and aunt to me. I should have known few
pleasures when I was growing up, and long afterwards, if it had not
been for them. The Robinsons used to go away trips every summer to
Devonshire and Derbysh