Mabel did not join in the desultory talk that engaged the others

until supper-time. There was a broken string in her heart, that

jangled painfully when touched by an incautious hand.

"Twelve years old!" she was saying, inwardly. "My darling would have

been thirteen, had she lived!"

And then flitted before her fancy a girlish form, with pure, loving

eyes, and a voice melodious as a mocking-bird's. Warm arms were

about her neck, and a round, soft cheek laid against hers--as no

human arms and face would ever caress her--her, the childless, whose

had been the hopes, fears, pains--never the recompence of maternity.

She had been to the graveyard that day--secretly, lest her husband

should frown, Clara wonder, and Winston sneer at her love for and

memory of that which had never existed, according to their rendering

of the term. She had trimmed the wire-grass out of the little

hollow, above which the mound had not been renewed since the day of

her baby's burial, and, trusting to the infrequency of others'

visits to the neglected enclosure, had laid a bunch of white

rose-buds over the unmarked dust she accounted still a part of her

heart, 'neath which it had lain so long. People said she had never

been a mother; never had had a living child; had no hope of seeing

it in heaven. God and she knew better.

"Clara, I wish you to attend Mrs. Tazewell's funeral this

afternoon," said Mr. Aylett at breakfast the next day but one after

this. "There were invidious remarks made upon your non-appearance at

her daughter's, and I do not choose that my family shall furnish

food for neighborhood scandal."

"My dear Winston, you must recollect what an insufferable headache I

had that day."

"Don't have one to-day," ordered her husband laconically. "Mabel, do

you care to go?"

"By all means. I would not fail, even in seeming, in rendering

respect to one I used to like so much, and whose kindness to me was

unvarying. You have no objection, Herbert?"

"None. I may accompany you--the day being fine, and the roads in

tolerable order."

The funeral was conducted with the disregard of what are, in other

regions, established customs that distinguish such occasions in the

rural districts of Virginia.

Written notices had been sent out, far and near, the day before,

announcing that the services would begin at two o'clock, but when

the Aylett party arrived at a quarter of an hour before the time

specified, there was no appearance of regular exercises of any kind.

A dozen carriges besides theirs were clustered about the front gate,

and a long line of saddle-horses tethered to the fence. Knots of

gentlemen in riding costume dotted the lawn and porches, and

within-doors ladies sat, or walked at their ease in the parlor and

dining room, or gathered in silent tearfulness around the open

coffin in the wide central hall.




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