She smiled, but her smile faded when she looked at me. And then I told her, sobbing, how it was; that I could not go into my future alone,--I could not do it! that she did not know how weak I was,--and reckless,--and wicked; that she did not know what she had been to me. I begged her not to leave me. I begged her to stay and help me bear my life. “My dear! you are as bad as Faith when I put her to bed alone.” “But,” I said, “when Faith cries, you go to her, you know.” “Are you quite in earnest, Mary?” she asked, after a pause. “You don’t know very much about me, after all, and there is the child. It is always an experiment, bringing two families into lifelong relations under one roof. If I could think it best, you might repent your bargain.” “_I_ am not ‘a family,’” I said, feebly trying to laugh. “Aunt Winifred, if you and Faith only _will_ make this your home, I can never thank you, never. I shall be entertaining my good angels, and that is the whole of it.” “I have had some thought of not going back,” she said at last, in a low, constrained voice, as if she were touching something that gave her great pain, “for Faith’s sake. I should like to educate her in New England, if--I had intended if we stayed to rent or buy a little home of our own somewhere, but I had been putting off a decision. We are most weak and most selfish sometimes when we think ourselves strongest and noblest, Mary. I love my husband’s people. I think they love me. I was almost happy with them. It seemed as if I were carrying on his work for him. That was so pleasant!” She put me down out of her arms and walked across the room. “I will think the matter over,” she said, by and by, in her natural tones, “and let you know to-night.” She went away up stairs then, and I did not see her again until to-night. I sent Faith up with her dinner and tea, judging that she would rather see the child than me. I observed, when the dishes came down, that she had touched nothing but a cup of coffee. I began to understand, as I sat alone in the parlor through the afternoon, how much I had asked of her. In my selfish distress at losing her, I had not thought of that. Faces that her husband loved, meadows and hills and sunsets that he has watched, the home where his last step sounded and his last word was spoken, the grave where she has laid him,--this last more than all,--call after her, and cling to her with yearning closeness. To leave them, is to leave the last faint shadow of her beautiful past. It hurts, but she is too brave to cry out. Tea was over, and Faith in bed, but still she did not come down. I was sitting by the window, watching a little crescent moon climb over the hills, and wondering whether I had better go up, when she came in and stood behind me, and said, attempting to laugh:-- “Very impolite in me to run off so, wasn’t it? Cowardly, too, I think. Well, Mary?” “Well, Auntie?” “Have you not repented your proposition yet?”