When the funeral obsequies were over, the next of kin who was heir came
to take possession of the estate which had fallen to him, and the widow
retired to her father's house for seclusion from the world. The town
house had been left to her by her deceased lord, but she did not wish to
return to it until the period of her mourning was over and she laid aside
her weeds. The income the earl had been able to bestow upon her made her
a rich woman, and when she chose to appear again in the world it would be
with the power to mingle with it fittingly.

During her stay at her father's house she did much to make it a more
suitable abode for her, ordering down from London furnishings and workmen
to set her own apartments and Anne's in order. But she would not occupy
the rooms she had lived in heretofore. For some reason it seemed to be
her whim to have begun to have an enmity for them. The first day she
entered them with Anne she stopped upon the threshold.

"I will not stay here," she said. "I never loved the rooms--and now I
hate them. It seems to me it was another woman who lived in them--in
another world. 'Tis so long ago that 'tis ghostly. Make ready the old
red chambers for me," to her woman; "I will live there. They have been
long closed, and are worm-eaten and mouldy perchance; but a great fire
will warm them. And I will have furnishings from London to make them fit
for habitation."

The next day it seemed for a brief space as if she would have changed
even from the red chambers.

"I did not know," she said, turning with a sudden movement from a side
window, "that one might see the old rose garden from here. I would not
have taken the room had I guessed it. It is too dreary a wilderness,