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The mystery teased her, but she said nothing. Aunt Merce had gone to Rosville with Arthur. There was no visitor with us; there had been none beside Ben since mother died. All seemed kept at bay. I wrote to Helen to come and pass the summer, but her child was too young for such a journey, she concluded. Ben had sailed for Switzerland.
"She is always ready," I thought, contemplating her as I would a picture. Her ruby-colored merino dress absorbed the light; she was a mass of deep red, except her face and hair, above which her silver crescent comb shone. Her slender feet were tapping the rug. She wore boots the color of her dress; Ben was looking at them. Mother was there, and in the background Aunt Merce and Fanny figured.
"Take a chair," said Temperance, who was never abashed, thumping one down before the stranger. "What is all this?" inquired father. "Only a Ranz des Vaches, father, to please Aunt Merce." The stranger's eyes were fastened upon me, while father introduced us to "Mr. Charles Morgeson, of Rosville." "Please receive me as a relative," he said, turning to shake hands with mother.
"Did you see a small bag I brought? And where's my satchel? Good heavens! What has made me put off that letter so? For I have thought of it, and yet I have kept it back." "It is safe, in your closet, Miss Cassandra; and the box is there." "Aunt Merce," I called, "will you have nothing to eat?" She laughed hysterically, when she saw what I had done. "Where is Hepsey, Aunt Merce?"
"Sass or no sass, I'm coming." She made me laugh for the first time in a month. I was too tired generally to be merry, with my endeavors to carry out father's wishes, and keep up the old aspect of the house. When she left us we all felt more cheerful. Aunt Merce wanted to come home, but Verry and I thought she had better stay at Rosville.
But I never looked upon the dead; perhaps that sight would have marred the slumbrous security which possessed me the instinctive faith in the durability of my own powers of life. But a change was approaching. Aunt Merce considered my present state a hopeless one.
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