‘Me, no! I never thought of such a thing. But why not you, Emmy? and, if not you, who else?’ Emmy clasped her hands together and shook her head. She had been shaking it for at least a minute before she let the words ‘Aunt Emily’ drop from her lips, with an accent of something like despair. ‘Aunt Emily!’ said Florence in the profoundest surprise: her tone changed in a moment into one of disdain. ‘Aunt Emily! why, she is old enough to be--she is almost as old as mamma. She has nothing to do with it at all.’ ‘Do you remember,’ said Emmy, with some solemnity, ‘_that_ French novel which we found in Uncle Thurston’s room?’ Florence nodded her head. It had been a fearful joy to find in their uncle’s room anything so wildly wicked, so universally condemned, as a yellow French novel. It had not been so delightful in the attempt to read it--for the girls were far too innocent to understand the stimulating fare there placed before them. But it was a terrible and alarming memory in their lives. ‘Well, the heroine in that was a widow,’ cried Emmy. ‘She was the one everybody thought of. And Mr. Swinford is quite French, and Aunt Emily doesn’t look old, and she is really handsome. Don’t you know when people want to be very complimentary to me they say I am like Aunt Emily?--only when they want to be very complimentary.’ ‘So you are; and the more he thinks of her the more he ought to turn to you, who are so like her.’ ‘Oh! do you think so? I, for my part, feel sure that he will like her best. She will be able to talk to him. She has been in Paris, where he comes from. She will be like the people he has been used to.’ ‘Oh! not like the people in Uncle Thurston’s novel!’ ‘I did not mean that; but she can talk, and she is what people call elegant, and you’ll see he’ll think more of her than either of you or me.’ ‘It is impossible,’ cried Florence, with the confidence of youth. ‘A woman with a grown-up daughter!’ ‘Wait,’ said Emmy oracularly, ‘and you will see.’ IX