“Did you carry my bonnet and shawl upstairs?”

“I did.”

“Will you be good enough to take this music to the parlor for me?”

She turned and put her hands behind her.  “Who was your waiter last year?”

“I had one,” putting the leaves under her arm; they fluttered to the floor, one by one.

“You must pick them up, or we shall spend the night here, and father is waiting for me.”

“Is he?” and she began to take them up.

“I am quite sure, Fanny, that I could punish you awfully.  I am sick to try.”

She moved toward the door slowly.  “Don’t tell him,” she said, stopping before it.

“I’ll tell nobody, but I am angry.  Let us arrive.”

She marched to the piano, laid the music on it, and marched out.

“By the way, Fanny,” I whispered, “the bonnet and shawl are yours, if you need them.”

“I guess I do,” she whispered back.

When I returned to my room, I found it in order and the bundles removed.

One day some Surrey friends called.  They told me I had changed very much, and I inferred from their tone they did not consider the change one for the better.

“How much Veronica has improved,” they continued, “do not you think so?”

“You know,” she interrupted, “that Cassandra has been dangerously ill, and has barely recovered.”

Yes, they had heard of the accident, everybody had; Mr. Morgeson must be a loss to his family, a man in the prime of life, too.

“The prime of life,” Veronica repeated.

She was asked to play, and immediately went to the piano.  Strange girl; her music was so filled with a wild lament that I again fathomed my desires and my despair.  Her eyes wandered toward me, burning with the fires of her creative power, not with the feelings which stung me to the quick.  Her face was calm, white, and fixed.  She stopped and touched her eyelids, as if she were weeping, but there were no tears in her eyes.  They were in mine, welling painfully beneath the lids.  I turned over the music books to hide them.

“That is a singular piece,” said one.  “Now, Cassandra, will you favor us?  We expect to find you highly accomplished.”

“I sang myself out before you came in.”

In the bustle of their going, Veronica stooped over my hand and kissed it, unseen.  It was more like a sigh upon it than a kiss, but it swept through me, tingling the scars on my face, as if the flesh had become alive again.

“Take tea with us soon, do.  We do not see you in the street or at church.  It must be dull for you after coming from a boarding-school.  Still, Surrey has its advantages.”  And the doors closed on them.

“Still, Surrey has its advantages,” Veronica repeated.

“Yes, the air is sleepy; I am going to bed.”

I made resolutions before I slept that night, which I kept, for I said, “Let the dead bury its dead.”