On a stand near the window was an old Bible, fairly worn out with constant use.  Miss Chauncey was religious; in fact, it was the only subject about which she was perfectly sane.  We saw almost nothing of her insanity that day, though afterward she was different.  There were days when her mind seemed clear; but sometimes she was silent, and often she would confuse Kate with Miss Brandon, and talk to her of long-forgotten plans and people.  She would rarely speak of anything more than a minute or two, and then would drift into an entirely foreign subject.

She urged us that afternoon to stay to luncheon with her; she said she could not offer us dinner, but she would give us tea and biscuit, and no doubt we should find something in Miss Carew’s basket, as she was always kind in remembering her fancies.  Miss Honora had told us to decline, if she asked us to stay; but I should have liked to see her sit at the head of her table, and to be a guest at such a lunch-party.

Poor creature! it was a blessed thing that her shattered reason made her unconscious of the change in her fortunes, and incapable of comparing the end of her life with its beginning.  To herself she was still Miss Chauncey, a gentlewoman of high family, possessed of unusual worldly advantages.  The remembrance of her cruel trials and sorrows had faded from her mind.  She had no idea of the poverty of her surroundings when she paced back and forth, with stately steps, on the ruined terraces of her garden; the ranks of lilies and the conserve-roses were still in bloom for her, and the box-borders were as trimly kept as ever; and when she pointed out to us the distant steeples of Riverport, it was plain to see that it was still the Riverport of her girlhood.  If the boat-landing at the foot of the garden had long ago dropped into the river and gone out with the tide; if the maids and men who used to do her bidding were all out of hearing; if there had been no dinner company that day and no guests were expected for the evening,—­what did it matter?  The twilight had closed around her gradually, and she was alone in her house, but she did not heed the ruin of it or the absence of her friends.  On the morrow, life would again go on.

We always used to ask her to read the Bible to us, after Mr. Lorimer had told us how grand and beautiful it was to listen to her.  I shall never hear some of the Psalms or some chapters of Isaiah again without being reminded of her; and I remember just now, as I write, one summer afternoon when Kate and I had lingered later than usual, and we sat in the upper room looking out on the river and the shore beyond, where the light had begun to grow golden as the day drew near sunset.  Miss Sally had opened the great book at random and read slowly, “In my Father’s house are many mansions”; and then, looking off for a moment at a leaf which had drifted into the window-recess, she repeated it:  “In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you.”  Then she went on slowly to the end of the chapter, and with her hands clasped together on the Bible she fell into a reverie, and the tears came into our eyes as we watched her look of perfect content.  Through all her clouded years the promises of God had been her only certainty.