“Before you read this, you will no doubt have heard the thing that has happened this sunshiny morning. Sassoon—poor Sassoon! I can say that with all my heart—is dead. What this fact will mean to you, God help me! I can not guess. For I have never been certain, Judith, of your heart. Sometimes I have thought you loved me—me only—as I love you. Last night when I saw you wearing my cape jessamines at the ball, I was almost sure of it. But when you made me promise, whatever happened, not to lift my hand against him, then I doubted. Was it because you feared for him? Would to God at this moment I knew this was not true! For whatever the fact, I must love you, darling, you and no other, as long as I live!” When she had read thus far, she closed the letter, and pressing a hand against her heart as if to still its throbbing, locked the written pages in a drawer of her bureau. She went down-stairs and made Ranston bring her chair to its accustomed place [Pg 410]under the rose-arbor, and sat there through the falling twilight. She and Shirley talked but little at dinner, and what she said seemed to come winging from old memories—her own girlhood, its routs and picnics and harum-scarum pleasures. And there were long gaps in which she sat silent, playing with her napkin, the light color coming and going in her delicate cheek, lost in revery. It was not till the hall-clock struck her usual hour that she rose to go to her room. “Don’t send Emmaline,” she said. “I shan’t want her.” She kissed Shirley good night. “Maybe after a while you will sing for me; you haven’t played your harp for ever so long.” In the subdued candle-light Mrs. Dandridge locked the door of her room. She opened a closet, and from the very bottom of a small haircloth trunk, lifted and shook out from its many tissue wrappings a faded gown of rose-colored silk, with pointed bodice and old-fashioned puff-sleeves. She spread this on the bed and laid with it a pair of yellowed satin slippers and a little straw basket that held a spray of what had once been cape jessamine. In the flickering light she undressed and rearranged her hair, catching its silvery curling meshes in a low soft coil. Looking almost furtively about her, she put on the rose-colored gown, and pinned the withered flower-spray on its breast. She lighted more candles—in the wall-brackets and on the [Pg 411]dressing-table—and the reading-lamp on the desk. Standing before her mirror then, she gazed long at the reflection—the poor faded rose-tint against the pale ivory of her slender neck, and the white hair. A little quiver ran over her lips. “‘Whatever the fact,’” she whispered, “‘... you and no other, as long as I live.’” She unlocked the bureau-drawer then, took out the letter, and seating herself by the table, read the remainder: “I write this in the old library and Bristow holds my horse by the porch. He will give you this letter when I am gone.