"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. As regarded spiritual likeness, mutual

affection, and assimilation of feeling and opinion, he and his wife

had receded, the one from the other, in the fourteen years of their

wedded life. There had been no decided rupture. Both disliked

altercations, and where radical opposition of sentiment existed,

they avoided the unsafe ground by tacit consent. Mabel's uniform

policy was that of outward submission to the mandates of her chief.




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