round arch, looking out on the garden and the sea beyond it. A
bracket was fastened to the sill, and on this bracket stood the lamp
that Miss Vesta was trimming. (It was against all fitness, as
Miss Phoebe said, that a lamp should be trimmed at this hour. Every
other lamp in the house was in perfect order by nine o'clock in the
morning; but it was Miss Vesta's fancy to trim this lamp in the
evening, and Miss Phoebe made a point of indulging her sister's
fancies when she conscientiously could.)

It was a brass lamp of quaint pattern, and the brass shone so that
several Miss Vestas, with faces curiously distorted, looked out at
the real one, as she daintily brushed off the burnt wicking, and,
after filling and lighting the lamp, replaced the brilliantly
polished chimney. She watched the flame as it crept along the wick;
then, when it burned steady and clear, she folded her hands with a
little contented gesture, and looked out of the window.

The sun had set. The sea on which Miss Vesta looked was a water of
gold, shimmering here and there into opal; only where it broke on
the shingle at the garden foot, the water was its usual colour of a
chrysophrase, with a rim of ivory where it touched the shore. The
window was open, and a light breeze blew from the water; blew across
the garden, and brought with it scents of lilac, syringa, and June
roses. It was a pleasant hour, and Miss Vesta was well content. She
liked even better the later evening, when the glow would fade from
the west, and her lamp would shed its own path of gold across the
water; but this was pleasant enough.

"It is a very sightly evening!" said Miss Vesta, in the soft
half-voice in which she often talked to herself. "Good Lord, I