else had occurred to her.

"Your father's thinkin' of gettin' married again," said Aunt Maria,
"and you may as well make up your mind to it, poor child." The words
were pitying, the tone not.

"Who?" gasped Maria.

"I don't know any more than you do," replied Aunt Maria, "but I know
it's somebody." Suddenly Aunt Maria arose. It seemed to her that she
must do something vindictive. Here she had to return to her solitary
life in her New England village, and her hundred dollars a year,
which somehow did not seem as great a glory to her as it had formerly
done. She went to the parlor windows and closed them with jerks, then
she blew out the lamp. "Come," said she, "it's time to go to bed. I'm
tired, for my part. I've worked like a dog all day. Your father has
got his key, an' he can let himself in when he gets through his
courtin'."

Maria crept miserably--she was still in a sort of daze--up-stairs
after Aunt Maria.

"Well, good-night," said Aunt Maria. "You might as well make up your
mind to it. I suppose it had to come, and maybe it's all for the
best." Aunt Maria's voice sounded as if she were trying to reconcile
the love of God with the existence of hell and eternal torment. She
closed her door with a slam. There are, in some New England women,
impulses of fierce childishness.

Maria, when she was in her room, had never felt so lonely in her