“No,” said Sylvia, in her strange voice.

“Then what—?”

Sylvia shook off his hands and rose to her feet.  Her scissors dropped with a thud.  She kept the fluffy white mass over her arm.  Henry picked up the scissors.  “Here are your scissors,” said he.

Sylvia paid no attention.  She was looking at him with stern, angry eyes.

“What I have to bear I have to bear,” said she.  “It is nothing whatever to you.  It is nothing whatever to any of you.  I want to be let alone.  If you don’t like to see my face, don’t look at it.  None of you have any call to look at it.  I am doing what I think is right, and I want to be let alone.”

She went out of the room, leaving Henry standing with her scissors in his hand.

After supper that night he could not bear to remain with Sylvia, sewing steadily upon Rose’s wedding finery, and still wearing that terrible look on her face.  Rose and Horace were in the parlor.  Henry went down to Sidney Meeks’s for comfort.

“Something is on my wife’s mind,” he told Sidney, when the two men were alone in the pleasant, untidy room.

“Do you think she feels badly about the love-affair?”

“She says that isn’t it,” replied Henry, gloomily, “but she goes about with a face like grim death, and I don’t know what to make of it.”

“She’ll tell finally.”

“I don’t know whether she will or not.”

“Women always do.”

“I don’t know whether she will or not.”

“She will.”

Henry remained with Meeks until quite late.  Sylvia sewed and sewed by her sitting-room lamp.  Her face never relaxed.  She could hear the hum of voices across the hall.

After awhile the door of the parlor was flung violently open, and she heard Horace’s rushing step upon the stair.  Then Rose came in, all pale and tearful.

“I have told him I couldn’t marry him, Aunt Sylvia,” she said.

Sylvia looked at her.  “Why not?” she asked, harshly.

“I can’t marry him and have you feel so dreadfully about it.”

“Who said I felt dreadfully about it?”

“Nobody said so; but you look so dreadfully.”

“I can’t help my looks.  They have nothing whatever to do with your love-affairs.”

“You say that just to pacify me, I know,” said Rose, pitifully.

“You don’t know.  Do you mean to say that you have dismissed him?”

“Yes, and he is horribly angry with me,” moaned Rose.

“I should think he would be.  What right have you to dismiss a man to please another woman, who is hardly any relation to you?  I should think he would be mad.  What did he do?”

“He just slammed the door and ran.”

Sylvia laid her work on the table and started out of the room with an angry stride.

“Where are you going?” asked Rose, feebly, but she got no reply.

Soon Sylvia re-entered the room, and she had Horace by the arm.  He looked stern and bewildered.  Sylvia gave him a push towards Rose.