The Mary E. Wilkins Freeman Megapack. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

property, and I’ve given up my school, and I’ve come for Agnes. I guess she’ll be glad to go with me, though I suppose her stepmother is a good woman, and has always done for her.”

      The man’s warning shake at his wife was fairly portentous.

      “I guess so,” said she.

      “John always wrote that she was a beautiful woman,” said Rebecca.

      Then the ferry-boat grated on the shore.

      John Dent’s widow had sent a horse and wagon to meet her sister-in-law. When the woman and her husband went down the road, on which Rebecca in the wagon with her trunk soon passed them, she said reproachfully:

      “Seems as if I’d ought to have told her, Thomas.”

      “Let her find it out herself,” replied the man. “Don’t you go to burnin’ your fingers in other folks’ puddin’, Maria.”

      “Do you s’pose she’ll see anything?” asked the woman with a spasmodic shudder and a terrified roll of her eyes.

      “See!” returned her husband with stolid scorn. “Better be sure there’s anything to see.”

      “Oh, Thomas, they say—”

      “Lord, ain’t you found out that what they say is mostly lies?”

      “But if it should be true, and she’s a nervous woman, she might be scared enough to lose her wits,” said his wife, staring uneasily after Rebecca’s erect figure in the wagon disappearing over the crest of the hilly road.

      “Wits that so easy upset ain’t worth much,” declared the man. “You keep out of it, Maria.”

      Rebecca in the meantime rode on in the wagon, beside a flaxen-headed boy, who looked, to her understanding, not very bright. She asked him a question, and he paid no attention. She repeated it, and he responded with a bewildered and incoherent grunt. Then she let him alone, after making sure that he knew how to drive straight.

      They had traveled about half a mile, passed the village square, and gone a short distance beyond, when the boy drew up with a sudden Whoa! before a very prosperous-looking house. It had been one of the aboriginal cottages of the vicinity, small and white, with a roof extending on one side over a piazza, and a tiny “L” jutting out in the rear, on the right hand. Now the cottage was transformed by dormer windows, a bay window on the piazzaless side, a carved railing down the front steps, and a modern hardwood door.

      “Is this John Dent’s house?” asked Rebecca.

      The boy was as sparing of speech as a philosopher. His only response was in flinging the reins over the horse’s back, stretching out one foot to the shaft, and leaping out of the wagon, then going around to the rear for the trunk. Rebecca got out and went toward the house. Its white paint had a new gloss; its blinds were an immaculate apple green; the lawn was trimmed as smooth as velvet, and it was dotted with scrupulous groups of hydrangeas and cannas.

      “I always understood that John Dent was well-to-do,” Rebecca reflected comfortably. “I guess Agnes will have considerable. I’ve got enough, but it will come in handy for her schooling. She can have advantages.”

      The boy dragged the trunk up the fine gravel-walk, but before he reached the steps leading up to the piazza, for the house stood on a terrace, the front door opened and a fair, frizzled head of a very large and handsome woman appeared. She held up her black silk skirt, disclosing voluminous ruffles of starched embroidery, and waited for Rebecca. She smiled placidly, her pink, double-chinned face widened and dimpled, but her blue eyes were wary and calculating. She extended her hand as Rebecca climbed the steps.

      “This is Miss Flint, I suppose,” said she.

      “Yes, ma’am,” replied Rebecca, noticing with bewilderment a curious expression compounded of fear and defiance on the other’s face.

      “Your letter only arrived this morning,” said Mrs. Dent, in a steady voice. Her great face was a uniform pink, and her china-blue eyes were at once aggressive and veiled with secrecy.

      “Yes, I hardly thought you’d get my letter,” replied Rebecca. “I felt as if I could not wait to hear from you before I came. I supposed you would be so situated that you could have me a little while without putting you out too much, from what John used to write me about his circumstances, and when I had that money so unexpected I felt as if I must come for Agnes. I suppose you will be willing to give her up. You know she’s my own blood, and of course she’s no relation to you, though you must have got attached to her. I know from her picture what a sweet girl she must be, and John always said she looked like her own mother, and Grace was a beautiful woman, if she was my sister.”

      Rebecca stopped and stared at the other woman in amazement and alarm. The great handsome blonde creature stood speechless, livid, gasping, with her hand to her heart, her lips parted in a horrible caricature of a smile.

      “Are you sick!” cried Rebecca, drawing near. “Don’t you want me to get you some water!”

      Then Mrs. Dent recovered herself with a great effort. “It is nothing,” she said. “I am subject to—spells. I am over it now. Won’t you come in, Miss Flint?”

      As she spoke, the beautiful deep-rose colour suffused her face, her blue eyes met her visitor’s with the opaqueness of turquoise—with a revelation of blue, but a concealment of all behind.

      Rebecca followed her hostess in, and the boy, who had waited quiescently, climbed the steps with the trunk. But before they entered the door a strange thing happened. On the upper terrace close to the piazza-post, grew a great rosebush, and on it, late in the season though it was, one small red, perfect rose.

      Rebecca looked at it, and the other woman extended her hand with a quick gesture. “Don’t you pick that rose!” she brusquely cried.

      Rebecca drew herself up with stiff dignity.

      “I ain’t in the habit of picking other folks’ roses without leave,” said she.

      As Rebecca spoke she started violently, and lost sight of her resentment, for something singular happened. Suddenly the rosebush was agitated violently as if by a gust of wind, yet it was a remarkably still day. Not a leaf of the hydrangea standing on the terrace close to the rose trembled.

      “What on earth—” began Rebecca, then she stopped with a gasp at the sight of the other woman’s face. Although a face, it gave somehow the impression of a desperately clutched hand of secrecy.

      “Come in!” said she in a harsh voice, which seemed to come forth from her chest with no intervention of the organs of speech. “Come into the house. I’m getting cold out here.”

      “What makes that rosebush blow so when their isn’t any wind?” asked Rebecca, trembling with vague horror, yet resolute.

      “I don’t see as it is blowing,” returned the woman calmly. And as she spoke, indeed, the bush was quiet.

      “It was blowing,” declared Rebecca.

      “It isn’t now,” said Mrs. Dent. “I can’t try to account for everything that blows out-of-doors. I have too much to do.”

      She spoke scornfully and confidently, with defiant, unflinching eyes, first on the bush, then on Rebecca, and led the way into the house.

      “It looked queer,” persisted Rebecca, but she followed, and also the boy with the trunk.

      Rebecca entered an interior, prosperous, even elegant, according to her simple ideas. There were Brussels carpets, lace curtains, and plenty of brilliant upholstery and polished wood.

      “You’re real nicely situated,” remarked Rebecca, after she had become a little accustomed to her new surroundings and the two women were seated at the tea-table.

      Mrs. Dent stared with a hard complacency from behind her silver-plated service. “Yes, I be,” said she.

      “You got all the things new?”