“Old Mrs. Tazewell has departed this life at last!” said Winston Aylett, entering his own parlor one bleak November evening on his return from the village post-office.  “I met Al.  Branch on the road just now.  For a wonder he was sober—­in honor of the occasion, I suppose.  He and Gus.  Tabb are to sit up with the corpse to-night.”

“When did she die?” queried his wife, drawing her skirts aside, that he might get nearer the fire.

“At twelve o’clock to-day.  That is, she ceased the unprofitable business of respiration at that hour.  She died, virtually, five years ago.  She has been little better than a mummy for that period.”

“Poor old lady!” said Mabel Dorrance, regretfully, from her corner of the hearth.  “Hers was a kind heart, while she could think and act intelligently.  One of my earliest recollections is of the dainties with which she used to ply me when I visited Rosa.  She was an indulgent parent and mistress, yet I suppose few even of those most nearly related to her will mourn her loss.”

“It would be very foolish if they did!” Mr. Aylett picked up the tongs to mend the fire.  “And very unnatural did they not rejoice at being rid of a burden.  The old place has been going to destruction all these years, and it could not be sold while she cumbered the upper earth.”

No one replied directly to this delicate and feeling observation, and Mrs. Aylett presently diverted the conversation slightly by saying,—­

“And Alfred Branch has gone to tender his services to the family!  There is something romantic in his constancy to a memory.  From the day of Rosa’s death, he has embraced every chance of testifying his respect for and wish to serve her friends.  He is a sadder wreck than was Mrs. Tazewell.  You would hardly recognize him, Mabel.  His hair and beard are white as those of a man of sixty-five, and his face bloated out of all comeliness.”

“White heat!” interjected Mr. Aylett.  “He can not last much longer.”

“And all because a pretty girl said him ‘Nay!’” pursued the wife.

Mr. Aylett and Mr. Dorrance made characteristic responses in a breath.

“The greater blockhead he!” said one.

The other, “His was never a rightly balanced mind, I suspect.  I always thought him weak and impressionable.”

“Are your adjectives synonymous?” asked Mrs. Aylett playfully.

“Generally!”

Her brother had been reading at a distant window, while the daylight sufficed to show him the type of his book.  He now laid it by, and came forward into the redder circle of radiance cast by the burning logs.  He was in his forty-third year, saturnine of visage, coldly monotonous in accent, a business machine that did its work in good, substantial style, and undertook no “fancy jobs.”  He had amassed a handsome fortune, built a handsome house, and married a handsome woman, all of which appendages to his consequence he contemplated with grim complacency.