“Yes, he liked it.”

“Well, it’s pretty, and it’s becoming to you.”

Charlotte took up the skirt, and slipped it, loud with silken whispers, over her head.  It swept out around her in a great circle; she looked like a gorgeous inverted bell-flower.

“It’s beautiful,” Rose said.

Charlotte’s face, gazing downward at the silken breadths, had quite its natural expression.  It was as if her mind in spite of herself would stop at old doors.

“Try on the waist,” pleaded Rose.

Charlotte slipped off her calico waist, and thrust her firm white arms into the flaring silken sleeves of the wedding-gown.  Her neck arose from it with a grand curve.  She stood before the glass and strained the buttons together, frowning importantly.

“It fits you like a glove,” Rose murmured, admiringly, smoothing Charlotte’s glossy back.

“I’ve got a spencer-cape to wear over my neck to meeting,” Charlotte said, and she opened the upper-most drawer in the chest and took out a worked muslin cape, and adjusted it carefully over her shoulders, pinning it across her bosom with a little brooch of her brother’s hair in a rim of gold.

“It’s elegant,” said Rose.

“I’ll show you my bonnet,” said Charlotte.  She went into a closet and emerged with a great green bandbox.

Rose bent over, watching her breathlessly as she opened it.  “Oh!” she cried.  “Oh, Charlotte!”

Charlotte held up the bonnet of fine Dunstable straw, flaring in front, and trimmed under the brim with a delicate lace ruche and a wreath of feathery white flowers.  Bows of white gauze ribbon stood up from it stiffly.  Long ribbon strings floated back over her arm as she held it up.

“Try it on,” said Rose.

Charlotte stepped before the glass and adjusted the bonnet to her head.  She tied the strings carefully under her chin in a great square bow; then she turned towards Rose.  The fine white wreath under the brim encircled her face like a nimbus; she looked as she might have done sitting a bride in the meeting-house.

“It’s beautiful,” Rose said, smiling, with grave eyes.  “You look real handsome in it, Charlotte.”  Charlotte stood motionless a moment, with Rose surveying her.

“Oh, Charlotte,” Rose cried out, suddenly, “I don’t believe but what you’ll have him, after all!” Rose’s eyes were sharp upon Charlotte’s face.  It was as if the bridal robes, which were so evident, became suddenly proofs of something tangible and real, like a garment left by a ghost.  Rose felt a sudden conviction that the quarrel was but a temporary thing; that Charlotte would marry Barney, and that she knew it.

A change came over Charlotte’s face.  She began untying the bonnet strings.

“Sha’n’t you?” repeated Rose, breathlessly.

“No, I sha’n’t.”

Charlotte took the bonnet off and smoothed the creases carefully out of the strings.