“July 15th.—I have seen Mrs. David West; have looked into her eyes, so like the doctor’s; have heard her voice; have seen the child; and oh! why _am_ I so wretched, and why, when I came back, did I tear up that rose from Anna’s grave and throw it to the winds? I hate this room. I cannot bear it, for Anna used to occupy it; she haunts me continually. She died in this room. _Richard kissed her here_, and here that child was born. Oh, what am I to think except what I do? And yet it is all suspicion, based on what a gossiping woman told me. I wish she had never come here. I would rather have cooked the dinner myself than have heard what I have. “It was arranged that Mattie should go with me to see this Mrs. David West, and I thought of little else all the morning; but when dinner came Mattie had been seized with one of her violent headaches, and it was impossible for her even to sit up. Knowing how much I had anticipated the call, and not wishing to have me disappointed, she insisted that I should go without her, Peter acting as my escort there, while the new cook, a Mrs. Felton, who, it seems, had business on that street, would call for me on her way home. This was the arrangement, and at about four o’clock I started. I had in some way received the impression that Mrs. David West lived on Elm Street, and when we passed that point I asked Peter if we were right. “‘Yes, miss, Grove Street,—just there a ways in the neatest little cottage you ever set eyes on, I reckon.’ “Involuntarily I thought of the woman and child seen that first evening of my arrival at Morrisville, and something told me I was going straight to that cottage with its roses, its vines, and bay-windows. The surmise was correct. I knew the house in an instant, and had there been a doubt it would have been dispelled by the widow’s cap and the little child out on the grass-plat, just where they were that other summer day so like this and yet so unlike it, for then I never guessed how sharp a pang I should be suffering now. “‘There she is. That’s Mrs. West with Robin,’ Peter said, and the next moment I was speaking to Mrs. David West, and before she said to me, ‘You know my son,’ I felt sure she was the doctor’s mother. “The same fine cast of feature, the same kind, honest expression beaming in the dark eye, and the same curve of the upper lip,—said by some to be always indicative of high breeding. The mother and son were very much alike, except that she as a female was noticeable for a softer style of beauty. I never saw one to whom the widow’s cap was so becoming. It seemed peculiarly adapted to her sad, sweet face and the silken bands of grayish hair, which it did not conceal. There was also in her manner and speech a refinement which even Bell Verner might have imitated with advantage. My heart went out to her at once, and by the time I was seated in the rustic chair, for I preferred remaining in the yard, I felt as much at ease as if I had known her all my life.