“Dear me, yes,” smiled Aunt Francesca.  “How time does fly!”

“You were very cross with Allison—­that is, as cross as you ever could be.  It seemed so queer for you to be angry at him and not at me, for I pulled up the bushes.”

“You were sufficiently punished, Isabel.  I believe the thorns hurt your little hands, didn’t they?”

“They certainly did,” responded the girl, with a little shudder at the recollection.  “I have a scar still.  That was—­let me see—­why, it was fifteen years ago!”

“Just before I came to live with Aunt Francesca,” said Rose.  “You and your mother went away the same day.”

“Yes, we went in the morning,” Isabel continued, “and you were to come in the afternoon.  I remember pleading with my mother to let me stay long enough to see ‘Cousin Wose.’”

“Fifteen years!” Madame repeated.  “Allison went abroad, then, to study the violin, and the house has been open only once since.  Richard came back for a Summer, to attend to some business, then returned to Europe.  How the time goes by!”

The letter fell to the floor and Francesca sat dreaming over the interlude of years.  Colonel Kent had been her husband’s best friend, and after the pitiless sword had cleaved her life asunder, had become hers.  At forty the Colonel had married a young and beautiful girl.  A year later Francesca had gone to him with streaming eyes, carrying his new-born son in her arms, to tell him that his wife was dead.

Drawn together by sorrow, the two had been as dear to each other as friends may be but seldom are.  Though childless herself, Francesca had some of the gifts of motherhood, and, at every step, she had aided and counselled the Colonel in regard to his son, who had his mother’s eyes and bore his mother’s name.  Discerning the boy’s talent, long before his father suspected it, she had chosen the violin for him rather than the piano, and had herself urged the Colonel to take him abroad for study though the thought of separation caused her many a pang.

When the two sailed away, Francesca had found her heart strangely empty; her busy hands strangely idle.  But Life had taught her one great lesson, and when one door of her heart was closed, she opened another, as quickly as possible.  So she sent for Rose, who was alone in the world, and, for fifteen years, the two women had lived happily together.

As she sat there, thinking, some of her gay courage failed her.  For the moment her mask was off, and in the merciless sunlight, she looked old and worn.  Rose, looking at her with tender pity, marvelled at the ignorance of man, in asking a frail little old lady to open and make habitable, in less than a fortnight, a house of fifteen large rooms.

“Aunt Francesca,” she said, “let me open the house.  Tell me what you want done, and Isabel and I will see to it.”

“Certainly,” agreed Isabel without enthusiasm.  “We’ll do it.”