Rose laughed, and there was something angelic and innocent about that laugh of the young girl.  Horace kissed her again, then both started.  “She is talking to herself in there,” whispered Rose.  “Horace, what do you suppose it is about?  Poor Aunt Sylvia must be worrying horribly about something.  What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know, darling,” replied Horace, soberly.

They both heard that lamentable murmur of a voice in the other room, but the doors were closed and not a word could be understood.

Sylvia was sewing rapidly, setting the most delicate and dainty stitches, and all the time she was talking carrying on a horrible argument, as if against some invisible dissenter.

“Ain’t I doing everything I can?” demanded Sylvia.  “Ain’t I, I’d like to know?  Ain’t I bought everything I could for her?  Ain’t I making her wedding-clothes by hand, when my eyes are hurting me all the time?  Ain’t I set myself aside and given her up, when God knows I love her better than if she was my own child?  Ain’t I doing everything?  What call have I to blame myself?  Only to-day I’ve bought a lot of silver for her, and I’m going to buy a lot more.  After the underclothes are done I’m going about the table linen, though she don’t need it.  I ain’t using a mite of her aunt Abrahama’s.  I’m saving it all for her.  I’m saving everything for her.  I’ve made my will and left all her aunt’s property to her.  What have I done?  I’m doing right; I tell you I’m doing right.  I know I’m doing right.  Anybody that says I ain’t, lies.  They lie, I say.  I’m doing right.  I—­”

Henry opened the door.  He had just returned from Sidney Meeks’s.  Sylvia was sewing quietly.

Henry looked around the room.  “Why, who were you talking to?” he asked.

“Nobody,” replied Sylvia, taking another stitch.

“I thought I heard you talking.”

“How could I be talking when there ain’t anybody here to talk to?”

Chapter XX

It was not quite a year afterwards that the wedding-day of Rose and Horace was set.  It was July, shortly after the beginning of the summer vacation.  The summer was very cool, and the country looked like June rather than July.  Even the roses were not gone.

The wedding was to be in the evening, and all day long women worked decorating the house.  Rose had insisted on being married in the old White homestead.  She was to have quite a large wedding, and people from New York and Boston crowded the hotel.  Miss Hart was obliged to engage three extra maids.  Hannah Simmons had married the winter before.  She had married a young man from Alford, where she now lived, and came over to assist her former mistress.  Lucinda had a look of combined delight and anxiety.  “It’s almost as bad as when they thought we’d committed murder,” she said to Hannah.

“It was queer how we found that,” said Hannah.