“I’m sorry I said anything,” Rose repeated; “I ought to have known it would make you feel bad, Charlotte.”

“No, you hadn’t.  I was terrible silly.  Don’t you want to see my dress, Rose?”

“Oh, Charlotte! you don’t want to show it to me?”

“Yes, I do.  I want you to see it—­before I pack it away.  It’s in the north chamber.”

Rose followed Charlotte out of the room across the passageway to the north chamber.  Charlotte had had one brother, who had died some ten years before, when he was twenty.  The north chamber had been his room, the bureau drawers were packed with his clothes, and the silk hat which had been the pride of his early manhood hung on the nail where he had left it, and also his Sunday coat.  His mother would not have them removed, but kept them there, with frequent brushings, to guard against dust and moths.

Always when Charlotte entered this small long room, which was full of wavering lines from its uneven floor and walls and ceiling and the long arabesques on its old blue-and-white paper, whose green paper curtains with fringed white dimity ones drooping over them were always drawn, and in summertime when the windows were open undulated in the wind, she had the sense of a presence, dim, but as positive as the visions she had used to have of faces in the wandering design of the old wall-paper when she had studied it in her childhood.  Ever since her brother’s death she had had this sense of his presence in his room; now she thought no more of it than of any familiar figure.  All the grief at his death had vanished, but she never entered his old room that the thought of him did not rise up before her and stay with her while she remained.

Now, when she opened the door, and the opposite green and white curtains flew out in the draught towards her, they were no more evident than this presence to which she now gave no thought, and pushed by her brother’s memory without a glance.

Rose followed her to the bed.  A white linen sheet was laid over the chintz counterpane.  Charlotte lifted the sheet.

“I took the last stitch on it Wednesday night,” she said, in a hushed voice.

“Didn’t he come that night?”

“I finished it before he came.”

“Did he see it?”

Charlotte nodded.  The two girls stood looking solemnly at the silk dress.

“You can’t see it here; it’s too dark,” said Charlotte, and she rolled up a window curtain.

“Yes, I can see better,” said Rose, in a whisper.  “It’s beautiful, Charlotte.”

The dress was spread widely over the bed in crisp folds.  It was purple, plaided vaguely with cloudy lines of white and delicate rose-color.  Over it lay a silvery lustre that was the very light of the silken fabric.

Rose felt it reverently.  “How thick it is!” said she.

“Yes, it’s a good piece,” Charlotte replied.

“You thought you’d have purple?”