"Mrs. Whitman does not seem well," Horace said, softly. "I think her nerves are all out of order with what she has gone through with lately," said Henry. "It has been a great change that has come to us both, Mr. Allen. When a man and woman have lived past their youth, and made up their minds to bread and butter, and nothing else, and be thankful if you get that much, it seems more like a slap than a gift of Providence to have mince-pie thrust into their mouths. It has been too much for Sylvia, and now, of course, this awful thing that has happened has upset her, and--" He stopped, for Sylvia opened the door suddenly. "If she wa'n't dead and gone, I wouldn't believe one word of such a tomfool story," said she, with vicious energy. Then she shut the door again. At dinner Sylvia ate nothing, and did not talk. Neither Henry nor Horace said much. In the afternoon Horace went out to make some arrangements which he had taken upon himself with regard to the dead woman, and presently Henry followed him. Sylvia worked with feverish energy all the afternoon setting a room in order for her expected guest. It was a pretty room, with an old-fashioned paper--a sprawling rose pattern on a tarnished satin ground. The room overlooked the grove, and green branches pressed close against two windows. There was a pretty, old-fashioned dressing-table between the front windows, and Sylvia picked a bunch of flowers and put them in a china vase, and set it under the glass, and thought of the girl's face which it would presently reflect. "I wonder if she looks like her mother," she thought. She stood gazing at the glass, and shivered as though with cold. Then she started at a sound of wheels outside. In front of the house was Leander Willard, who kept the livery-stable of East Westland. He was descending in shambling fashion over the front wheels, steadying at the same time a trunk on the front seat; and Horace Allen sprang out of the back of the carriage and assisted a girl in a flutter of dark-blue skirts and veil. "She's come!" said Sylvia. Chapter VIII Sylvia gave a hurried glance at her hair in the glass. It shone like satin with a gray-gold lustre, folded back smoothly from her temples. She eyed with a little surprise the red spots of excitement which still remained on her cheeks. The changelessness of her elderly visage had been evident to her so long that she was startled to see anything else. "I look as if I had been pulled through a knot-hole," she muttered.