“Coming,” said Kitty, kissing grandma fondly, and then following Pompey as he marched gravely up to open the door of Mrs. Verplanck’s morning-room.  It was a tiny apartment; for when Gulian Verplanck brought his young bride home he had added a room to the wing below, and as it greatly enlarged their bedroom, the happy idea had struck him to throw up a partition, corner-ways, which formed an irregularly shaped room opening on the passage, and gave Clarissa her own cherished den in that great house of square rooms and high ceilings.  In it she had placed all her home belongings; her spinnet, which had been her mother’s (brought by sloop to New York from New Haven), found the largest space there, and her grandmother’s small spinning-wheel was in the corner near the chimney-piece which Gulian had contrived to have put in lest his delicate wife might suffer with cold.

Near the small log which blazed brightly on the hearth, in a low chair made somewhat easy with cushions, sat a fair, fragile-looking, girlish figure, in whose mournful dark eyes was something so pathetic that it suggested the old-time prophecy that such “die young.”  Clarissa Verplanck in that resembled none of her family, and the one reason for her father’s and aunt’s anxiety about her was that she was thought the image of a sister of her mother who fulfilled the prophecy.  Be that as it may, Clarissa was anything but a mournful person in general; her spirits were somewhat prone to outrun her physical strength, and therefore her sad little appeal for one of her sisters to cheer her had come in the light of a demand to the Litchfield home, and alarmed them more than anything else could have done.

“Kitty, Kitty,” said Clarissa, holding out a welcoming hand to her visitor, who seated herself on a cricket beside her, “why have you not been in this four days?  I am truly glad to see you, for ever since Gulian and I dispatched our letters to my father I have been so cross and impatient that I fear my good husband is beginning to tire of his bargain, and lament a peevish wife.”

“Heaven forgive you for the slander,” retorted Kitty, laughing; “if ever there was a husband who adored the ground you walk on, Gulian is”—­

“Thank you,” said a quiet voice, as a tall dark man entered from the bedroom.

“Let me finish my sentence—­Gulian is that benighted swain,” burst in Kitty.

“Again, my thanks,” answered Gillian gravely.  To none but Clarissa was he ever seen to relax his serious manner; perhaps hers were the only eyes who saw the tenderness behind the stern, reserved exterior.  He really liked his cousin; but although Kitty was not, like most people, afraid of him, it must be confessed that he wearied her, and she much preferred to have her gossip with Clarissa, when Gulian was safely out of the house.

“And now tell me about the letters,” pursued Kitty.  “You sent for your sister, grandma told me.  Which one, Clarissa?”