In these sunny days of early spring, Sylvie could not help being happy.  The snows were gone now, except in deep, dark places, out of the woods; the ferns and vines and grasses were alive and eager for a new summer’s grace and fullness; their far-off presence made the air different, already, from the airs of winter.

Yet Rodney Sherrett had kept silence.

All these weeks had gone by, and Miss Euphrasia had had no answer from over the water.  Of all the letters that went safely into mail bags, and of all the mail bags that went as they were bound, and of all the white messages that were scattered like doves when those bags were opened,—­somehow—­it can never be told how,—­that particular little white, folded sheet got mishandled, mislaid, or missent, and failed of its errand; and at the time when Miss Euphrasia began to be convinced that it must be so, there came a letter from Mr. Sherrett to herself, written from London, where he had just arrived after a visit to Berlin.

“I have had no family news,” he wrote, “of later date than January 20th.  Trust all is well.  Shall sail from Liverpool on the 9th.”

The date of that was March 20th.

The fourteenth of April, Easter Monday, was fixed for Desire
Ledwith’s marriage.

Rachel Froke came back on the Friday previous.  Desire would have her in time, but not for any fatigues.

The gray parlor was all ready; everything just as it had been before she left it.  The ivies had been carefully tended, and the golden and brown canary was singing in his cage.  There was nothing to remind of the different life to which, the place had been lent, making its last hours restful and pleasant, or of the death that had stepped so noiselessly and solemnly in.

Desire had formally made over this house to her cousin and co-heiress, Hazel Ripwinkley.

“It must never be left waiting, a mere possible convenience, for anybody,” she said.  “There must be a real life in it, as long as we can order it so.”

The Ripwinkleys were to leave Aspen Street, and come here with Hazel.  Miss Craydocke, who never had half room enough in Orchard Street, was to “spill over” from the Bee-hive into the Mile-hill house.  “She knew just whom to put there; people who would take care and comfort.  Them shouldn’t be any hurt, and there would be lots of help.”

There was a widow with three daughters, to begin with; “just as neat as a row of pins;” but who had had less and less to be neat with for seven years past; one of the daughters had just got a situation as compositor, and another as a book-keeper; between them, they could earn twelve hundred dollars a year.  The youngest had to stay at home and help her mother do the work, that they might all keep together.  They could pay three hundred dollars for four rooms; but of course they could not get decent ones, in a decent neighborhood, for that.  That was what Bee-hives were for; houses that other people could do without.