"How well did you know Charlie, dear?" asked Rachael when Fanny was for the moment out of hearing and they were in the dark, rep-draped reception-room. She had asked Charlotte to sit down, but Charlotte nervously had said that she could stay but another minute. "Oh, n-n-not very well, Aunt Rachael--that is, we didn't see each other often, since"--Rachael knew since when, and liked Charlotte for the clumsy substitute--"since Billy was married. I know Charlie called, but M'ma didn't tell me until weeks later, and then we were on the ocean. We met now and then, and once he telephoned, and I think he would have liked to see me, but M'ma felt so strongly--there was no way. And then last summer--we h-h-happened to meet, he and I, at Jane Cook's wedding, and we had quite a talk. I knew M'ma would be angry, but it just seemed as if I couldn't think of it then. And we talked of the things we liked, you know, the sort of house we both liked--not like other people's houses!" Charlotte's plain young face had grown bright with the recollection, but now her voice sank lifelessly again. "But M'ma made me promise never to speak to him again, and of course I promised," she said dully. "I see." Rachael was silent. There seemed to be nothing to say. "I suppose I couldn't--speak to him a moment, Aunt Rachael?" Charlotte was scarlet, but she got the words out bravely. "Oh, my dear, he wouldn't know you. He doesn't know any of us now. He just lies there, sometimes sighing a little--" Charlotte was as pale now as she had been rosy before, her lip trembled, and her whole face seemed to be suffused with tears. "I see," she said in turn. "Thank you, Aunt Rachael, thanks ever so much. I--I wish you'd tell his grandmother how sorry I am. I--suppose Fanny and I had better go now." But before she went Rachael opened her arms, and Charlotte came into them, and cried bitterly for a few minutes. "Poor little girl!" said the older woman tenderly. "Poor little girl!" "I always loved you," gulped Charlotte, "and I would have come to see you, if M'ma--And of course it was nothing but the merest friendship b-between Charlie and me, only we--we always seemed to like each other." And Charlotte, her romance ended, wiped her eyes and blew her nose, and went away. Rachael went slowly upstairs. Late that same afternoon, as she and the trained nurse were dreamily keeping one of the long sick-watches, she looked at the patient, and was surprised to see his rather insignificant eyes fixed earnestly upon her. Instantly she went to the bedside and knelt down. "What is it, Charlie-boy?" she asked, in the merest rich, tender essence of a tone. The sick eyes broke over her distressedly. She could see the fine dew of perspiration at his waxen temples, and the lean hand over which she laid her own was cool after all these feverish days, unwholesomely cool.