“All right,” said Maria.  “I’ll sit here a little while, and then I’ll light my lamp.  I’ve got some work to do.”

“I’m going into the other side, after I’ve finished the dishes,” said Aunt Maria.

“You won’t—­”

“No, I won’t.  Let George Ramsey chew his sour grapes if he wants to.  I sha’n’t say anything about it.  Anybody with any sense can’t help knowing a man of sense would have rather had you than Lily Merrill.  I ain’t afraid of anybody thinking you’re slighted.”  There was indignant and acrid loyalty in Aunt Maria’s tone.  She closed the door, as was her wont, with a little slam and went down-stairs.  Aunt Maria walked very heavily.  Her steps jarred the house.

Maria continued sitting at her window.  Presently a new light, a rosy light of a lamp under a pink shade, flashed in her eyes.  The parlor in the Merrill house was lighted.  Maria saw Lily draw down the curtain, upon which directly appeared the shadows of growing plants behind it in a delicate grace of tracery.  Presently Maria saw a horse and sleigh drive into the Merrill yard.  She saw Mrs. Merrill open the side-door, and Dr. Ellridge enter.  Then she watched longer, and presently a dark shadow of a man passed down the street, of which she could see a short stretch from her window, and she saw him go to the front door of the Merrill house.  Maria knew that was George Ramsey.  She laughed a little, hysterical laugh as she sat there in the dark.  It was ridiculous, the two pairs of lovers in the two rooms!  The second-hand, warmed-over, renovated love and the new.  After Maria laughed she sobbed.  Then she checked her sobs and sat quite still and fought, and presently a strange thing happened, which is not possible to all, but is possible to some.  With an effort of the will which shocked her house of life, and her very soul, and left marks which she would bear to all eternity, she put this unlawful love for the lover of another out of her heart.  She closed all her doors and windows of thought and sense upon him, and the love was gone, and in its place was an awful emptiness which yet filled her with triumph.

“I do not love him at all now,” she said, quite aloud; and it was true that she did not.  She rose, pulled down her curtains, lighted her lamp, and went to work.

Chapter XXVI

Maria, after that, went on her way as before.  She saw, without the slightest qualm, incredible as it may seem, George Ramsey devoted to Lily.  She even entered without any shrinking into Lily’s plans for her trousseau, and repeatedly went shopping with her.  She began embroidering a bureau-scarf and table-cover for Lily’s room in the Ramsey house.  It had been settled that the young couple were to have the large front chamber, and Mrs. Merrill’s present to Lily was a set of furniture for it.  Mrs. Ramsey’s old-fashioned walnut set was stowed away.  Maria even went with Mrs. Merrill to purchase