During the ensuing winter, Meta and Mr. Morris met repeatedly at our house. We rarely received company in the evenings, therefore, they were always sure of being undisturbed. It was my father’s custom to retire early, and my good Aunt Mary is by nature unsuspicious and innocent as a child. She and I would sit in the library, sewing and knitting, listening to Meta’s merry talk; then, after Mr. Morris would join the circle, I generally proposed music, which made an excuse for Meta and her lover to go into the drawing-room, which opened on my library. Meta was a good musician, she played very finely, and had a beautiful voice. I used to declare the music sounded better from the library; so by this little piece of management on my part, the lovers were left together. After a few pieces, the music ceased, and for an hour or more their low, murmuring conversation would come soothingly on my ear like the sound of sweet melody. I used to smile as I would look around me. We would have made a pretty picture if that sweet music of loving voices could have been made visible on the canvas. I was the only observing, conscious one of the circle, for dear Aunt Mary was as unconscious as Zoe and Flirt, the little hound and pet kitten that napped comfortably on either side of the library fire. My aunt in her large easy-chair and reading-stand before her, while her knitting-needles fairly flew, would be completely absorbed in some work of fiction, her greatest delight, never dreaming that a real love-story was progressing under her eyes. She has always been an inveterate novel reader, this same Aunt Mary; but I must say for her, that this taste, so pernicious to many, preventing them from performing their daily duties with interest, making real life tame for them, has had no bad effect upon her—a more industrious, excellent woman never breathed; and it has often amused me that, although she dotes upon love-stories on paper, and can follow patiently and unwearyingly the written account of the most intricate romance, love in real life possesses but little interest for her. She breathes a different atmosphere while reading—seems in another state of existence, which completely vanishes so soon as the book is laid aside; and she takes up life and life’s duties in the most matter-of-fact, conscientious manner imaginable. I often wonder what she does with all the love stories she reads, for she never makes use of them in every day affairs; and even when a real little bit of romance which has taken place in actual life is pointed out to her, she is entirely wanting in sympathetic appreciation, regarding it as quite absurd.