“The day promises so fairly, my daughters, if you like, we will drive to see an old acquaintance, and on the way I will tell you some of those passages in my life, which I know you want to hear of, but from the relation of which I have always shrunk. Time has lessened the vividness of much I have suffered; but what we feel early in life, we feel late with a clearness it is difficult to account for. But you ought to know something of the history of your grandmother, and although I do not intend to give you a full memoir to-day, and perhaps never, I will talk with you somewhat of old days and feelings. In an hour we will go, and until then I shall be engaged in my own room.” Alice and Louisa looked wistfully at each other, as their aged relative withdrew, but uttered not a word. Often and often they had wished, and hoped, and guessed, till they were weary of guessing what grandmamma’s life had been—for they were a little curious, though not reflective; and many a time a chance word or two had puzzled their young heads not a little; but hardly had they dared to hope that they ever should know, at all events, not before they were twenty-five—quite old women—any thing about it; and now that they were to know, _really_, it was quite too important a subject to trifle upon. So Louisa, with her mouth very much drawn down at the corners, and her eyebrows proportionably arched, withdrew to her room, as much like Madam Stanwood as possible, while Alice relapsed into her grandmother’s easy-chair. Reflection in an easy-chair is apt to glide into reverie, and thence the transition to sleep is not uncommon; and Alice was waked out of marvelous dreams, by the announcement that the carriage waited for her. The day was fine and clear, though a little cold, and as the carriage-wheels rolled almost noiselessly over the smooth, hard road, it seemed the very afternoon of all the world for story-telling. Yet Madam Stanwood looked silently out on the landscape before them, and the young girls did not venture to speak. At last they stopped at a house where they were a good deal acquainted. The Williamses were all at home; and a right gay set of young people they were: then there were their father and mother, and Mrs. Williams’ brother, old Colonel Morgan, who was always ready for a frolic, and the two Miss Dundasses, from Richmond. They had a very gay call. The two Miss Stanwoods flirted desperately with the old colonel, and the two Miss Dundasses beat him about the room with bouquets of bright flowers; and there was such laughing, till the tears ran, with old Mr. Williams, and such gentle and sympathizing laughter among the old ladies, and such heartfelt fun among all, that it was with some effort the Stanwoods at last left the resounding parlor for the silent carriage. Silent it became as soon as the doors were closed, and the soft, crackling sound of the wheels brought the old associations of painful thought and anxious expectation.