Abigail Weatherby her girlhood friend, who had married unhappily,
and then died?

Somewhere in Aunt Jane's fifty-five years there was a romance,
but, after all, it was not her niece's business. "I'm an
imaginative goose," Ruth said to herself. "I'm asked to keep a
light in the window, presumably as an incipient lighthouse, and
I've found some old clothes and two old papers in the
attic--that's all--and I've constructed a tragedy."

She resolutely put the whole matter aside, as she sat in her
room, rocking pensively. Her own lamp had not been filled and was
burning dimly, so she put it out and sat in the darkness,
listening to the rain.

She had not closed the shutters and did not care to lean out in
the storm, and so it was that, when the whistle of the ten
o'clock train sounded hoarsely, she saw the little glimmer of
light from Miss Ainslie's window, making a faint circle in the
darkness.

Half an hour later, as before, it was taken away. The scent of
lavender and sweet clover clung to Miss Hathaway's linen, and,
insensibly soothed, Ruth went to sleep. After hours of dreamless
slumber, she thought she heard a voice calling her and telling
her not to forget the light. It was so real that she started to
her feet, half expecting to find some one standing beside her.

The rain had ceased, and two or three stars, like timid children,
were peeping at the world from behind the threatening cloud. It