Though I was much nearer crying that being amused, I could not but laugh at Mrs. Saltoun’s anxiety about her Miss Mortimer, whom there was not the very slightest reason to suppose any relation of mine. I took up the idea myself, I must say, with quite a ludicrous sort of uncomfortable satisfaction. If I had a grandfather, why should not I have an aunt? Why should there not be an old Miss Mortimer living in the red-brick house, ready to take me in, and kill me slowly by degrees? I formed an immediate picture of her--how she would look, and what she would say to me. I fancied her dressed up in her old fashions, trying to look young and a beauty still. How dreadful it must be to drop from being a great beauty, and having everybody worship you, down to a mere old woman left all by yourself! Poor old Miss Mortimer! If she was my aunt, and was very cross, and discontented, and miserable, there might be something different in the old red-brick house, that quiet, dead comfortable home that poor Harry, in his love and kindness, was so anxious to find for me. There would be some satisfaction in living a miserable life with an ogre in an enchanted castle if Harry were away. Mrs. Saltoun’s words did not alarm me; on the contrary, I grew quite curious about this imaginary Miss Mortimer. I thought I could fancy her going about those faded rooms which yesterday I fancied seeing myself in. Now it was her figure I saw all alone by the fire. Had she got used to it, I wonder? or did she chafe and beat her poor old wings against the cage, and hate the world that had given over admiring her? I tried to spell out what kind of a beauty she had been; but it was always twilight in the old-fashioned room. Tall, to be sure, with grey hair that had been black, and proud eyes all wrinkled up in their sockets. Poor old Miss Mortimer! I wonder did she know that she had an orphan niece who was to be sent to her for a comfortable home? Couldn’t I look again, and see myself come in, and how she greeted me? I think I must have grown quite fantastic in my troubles. I could not keep my thoughts away from Mrs. Saltoun’s great beauty. All alone in the house that was falling into decay, what ghosts must crowd about her! Did she see the Count she had ill-used oftenest, or some other who was more favoured? How did she keep these phantoms off from her in the silence? I kept going over all this as other girls go over imaginary romances of their own; I knew what my own romance was; but still I was only nineteen, and loved to dream.