whose brief blossoming had lent a transient freshness to her days.
She wondered now how she could ever have supposed that Mr. Ramy's
visits had another cause than the one Miss Mellins suggested. Had
not the sight of Evelina first inspired him with a sudden
solicitude for the welfare of the clock? And what charms but
Evelina's could have induced him to repeat his visit? Grief held
up its torch to the frail fabric of Ann Eliza's illusions, and with
a firm heart she watched them shrivel into ashes; then, rising from
her knees full of the chill joy of renunciation, she laid a kiss on
the crimping pins of the sleeping Evelina and crept under the
bedspread at her side.


V


During the months that followed, Mr. Ramy visited the sisters
with increasing frequency. It became his habit to call on them
every Sunday evening, and occasionally during the week he would
find an excuse for dropping in unannounced as they were settling
down to their work beside the lamp. Ann Eliza noticed that Evelina
now took the precaution of putting on her crimson bow every evening
before supper, and that she had refurbished with a bit of carefully
washed lace the black silk which they still called new because it
had been bought a year after Ann Eliza's.

Mr. Ramy, as he grew more intimate, became less
conversational, and after the sisters had blushingly accorded him
the privilege of a pipe he began to permit himself long stretches
of meditative silence that were not without charm to his hostesses.