“There must everlastingly be an unless, or a but somewhere, and here it is—­a big one in the shape of a woman—­a lovely woman, too, if she is nearer forty than twenty.  Don’t you remember I once told you of a girl whom my uncle brought home from the South, and who ran off with her music teacher, an Italian.  Well, she is here—­a wreck physically and mentally in one sense; not exactly insane, but with memory so impaired that she can tell nothing of her past, or perhaps she does not wish to.  She always says, when questioned about it, ’I don’t remember, and it makes my head ache to try.’

“It seems her first husband, Candida, took her abroad and gave her every advantage in music, both in Paris and Italy.  When he died she married Homer Smith, an American, who was associated with him in some way.  After his return to America he got up what was known as the ‘Homer Troupe.’  He dropped his last name, thinking the Smith Troupe would not sound as well as Homer.  His wife was the drawing card.  She had a wonderful voice as a girl, they say, with a peculiarly pathetic tone in it, like what you hear in negro concerts, and it was this and her beauty which took with the people.  She hated the business, but was compelled to sing by her husband, who, I fancy, was a tyrant and a brute.  They starred it in the far West mostly, until her health and mind gave way, and she went raving mad on the stage, I believe.  He put her in a private asylum in San Francisco.  How long she was there I don’t know, and she don’t know.  She was always a little queer, they say, and people predicted she would be crazy some time.  Her husband died suddenly in Santa Barbara.  Just before he died he tried to say something, but could only manage to give his physician the Colonel’s address, and say, ’Tell him where my wife is.’

“Off started the Colonel, lame, and gouty, and rheumatic as he is, and brought her home, and has set her up as a kind of queen whose slightest wish is to be obeyed.  To do her justice she has not many wishes.  She is very quiet, talks but little, and seems in a kind of brown study most of the time.  Occasionally she rouses up and asks if we are sure he is dead—­the he being her husband—­the last one, presumably.  When we tell her he is she smiles and says, ’I think I’m glad, for now I shall never have to sing again in public.’  Then she says in a very different tone, ’Baby is dead, too; and my head has ached so hard ever since that I cannot think or remember, only it was sudden and took my life away.’

“She has an old red cloak which at times she wraps around a shawl, and cuddles it as if it were a baby, crooning some negro melody she heard South.  There must have been a little child who died, but she is not clear on the subject.  Sometimes it is a baby; sometimes a grown girl; sometimes it died in one place; sometimes in another; but always just before she was going to sing, and the room was full of coffins until she sank down, and knew no more.  Whether my uncle has taken pains to inquire about the child, I don’t know.  He does not like children, and is satisfied to have Amy back, and is trying to atone for his former harshness.  He calls her Amy, instead of Eudora, because the latter was the name by which she was known in the Homer Troupe, and he saw it flaunted on a handbill advertising the last concert in which she took part.