"If I've asked you once to come and live with me, I've asked you fifty times," grumbled the old lady, sitting down with a good deal of flutter and rustle. "There I must stay, left alone at my age, with nobody but that old goose of a Direxia Hawkes to look after me. And all because you like to be independent. Set you up! Well, I shan't ask you again, and so I've come to tell you, Mary Jaquith." "Dear old friend, you forgive me, I know. You never can have thought for a moment, seriously, that I could be a burden on your kind hands. There surely is some one with you, Mrs. Tree! Is it Direxia? Please be seated, whoever it is." There was a slight sound, as of a sob checked in the outbreak. Mrs. Tree shook her head fiercely. The blind woman rose from her seat, very pale. "Who is it? Be kind, please, and tell me." "I'm going to tell you," said Mrs. Tree, "if you will have patience for two minutes, and not drive every idea out of my head with your talk. I had a visitor last night, Mary--some one came to see me--an old acquaintance--some one who had seen Willie lately. Now Mary Jaquith, if you don't sit down,--well, of all the unreasonable women I ever saw!" The blind woman had stretched out her arms with a heavenly gesture of appeal,--of welcome, of love unutterable,--and in a moment more her son's arms were about her and he was crying over and over again, "Mother, mother, mother!" as if he could not have enough of that word. FOOTNOTE: [79] An adaptation by Grace Arlington Owen. THE PORTRAIT ROBERT BULWER LYTTON Midnight past! Not a sound of aught Through the silent house, but the wind at his prayers. I sat by the dying fire, and thought Of the dear dead woman upstairs. A night of tears! for the gusty rain Had ceased, but the eaves were dripping yet; And the moon looked forth, as though in pain, With her face all white and wet: Nobody with me, my watch to keep, But the friend of my bosom, the man I love: And grief had sent him fast to sleep In the chamber up above. Nobody else, in the country place All round, that knew of my loss beside, But the good young priest with the Raphael-face, Who confessed her when she died. The good young priest is of gentle nerve, And my grief had moved him beyond control; For his lips grew white, as I could observe, When he speeded her parting soul. I sat by the dreary hearth alone; I thought of the pleasant days of yore. I said, "The staff of my life is gone; The woman I loved is no more. "On her cold, dead bosom my portrait lies Which next to her heart she used to wear,-- Haunting it o'er with her tender eyes When my own face was not there. "It is set all round with rubies red, And pearls which a Peri might have kept; For each ruby there my heart hath bled; For each pearl my eyes have wept."