"Is your father well?"

"Yes, ma'am; I thank you."

During this dialogue Aunt Camilla was moving gently forward upon her
niece. When she reached her she stooped, or rather drooped--for
stooping implies a bend of bone and muscle, and her graceful body
seemed to be held together by integuments like long willow
leaves--and kissed her with a light touch of cool, delicate lips.
Aunt Camilla's slender arms in their pointed lilac sleeves and lace
undersleeves waved forward as with a vague caressing intent. Soft
locks of hair and frilling laces in her cap and bosom hung forward
like leaves on a swaying bough, and tickled Lucina's face, half
smothered in the old lavender fragrance.

Lucina colored innocently and sweetly when her aunt kissed her, and
afterwards looked up at her with sincerest love and admiration and
delight.

Camilla Merritt was far from young, being much older than her
brother, Lucina's father; but she was old as a poem or an angel might
be, with the lovely meaning of her still uppermost and most evident.
Camilla in her youth had been of a rare and delicate beauty, which
had given her fame throughout the country-side, and she held the best
of it still, as one holds jewels in a worn casket, and as a poem
written in obsolete language contains still its first grace of
thought. Camilla's soft and slender body had none of those stiff,
distorted lines which come from resistance to the forced attitudes of
life. Her body and her soul had been amenable to all discipline. She