“It was in your dear papa’s answer to my invitation, my love.  Oh! so shocked I was dear little Sophie couldn’t come—­lay awake all that night with a headache—­yes, indeed!—­when he wrote to me, you know—­such a dear, noble letter it was, too!  Oh!  I read it over a dozen—­twenty times at least!—­he mentioned this new pupil of his—­seemed interested in him—­of course I can’t help being interested in whatever interests any of you dear ones, you know—­he mentioned his strange name and all—­it is a strange name, isn’t it, love?”

“It isn’t his real name,” interposed Cornelia; “nobody except papa knows who he is.  It’s just like one of those ancient names, you know—­the Christian name and the surname in one.”

“Oh, yes, I see—­so odd, isn’t it?—­such a mystery, and all that—­yes—­so that’s how I came to speak of him, I suppose.  One gets ideas of a person that way sometimes, don’t you know, though they may never have actually seen them at all?  Oh! when I was a young thing, I was just full of those—­ideals, I used to call them—­oh, you know all about it, I dare say!”

“He met with a very serious accident just before I came away,” said Cornelia to the ear-trumpet; “he stopped Dolly—­our horse—­she was running away with papa in the wagon.  He saved papa beautifully, but he was dreadfully hurt—­his collar-bone was broken, and he was kicked, and almost killed.  He’s at our house now, and papa’s taking care of him.”

At this information Aunt Margaret became very white, or rather bloodless, in the face.  She allowed the ear-trumpet to hang by its silver chain from her neck, and, reaching out her hand to a recess in the writing-table at which she sat, she drew forth a small ebony box, set in silver, and carved all over with little figures in bass-relief.  Opening it, she took out a few grains of some dark substance which the box contained, and slipped them eagerly into her large mouth, Cornelia watched her out of the corner of her eyes, and, being a physician’s daughter, she drew her own conclusions.

“Ho, ho! that’s where your sick-headaches, and yellow complexion, and nervousness, and weak eyes, come from, is it?  You’d better look out! that’s morphine, or opium, or some such thing, I know; and papa says that old ladies like you, who use such drugs, are liable to get insane after a while, and I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if you were to become insane, Aunt Margaret!”

This agreeable prophecy, being confined solely to Cornelia’s thoughts, was naturally inaudible to Mrs. Vanderplanck.  She murmured something about her doctor having prescribed medicine to be taken at that hour, and then, the medicine appearing to have an immediate and salutary effect, she found her color and her voice again, and took up the conversation.

“Shocking! oh, shocking! so sad for the poor young man—­no father—­no—­no mother there to care for him.  He it an orphan, is he not?—­no relatives, I suppose—­no one who belongs to him, poor boy!  Dear, dear!—­but he’s not fatally injured, is he?—­not fatally?”