"Yes, I would. I would! I wouldn't be ashamed of anything if I was going to marry him. I'd go on my knees before him in the face and eyes of the whole town."

"Well, I wouldn't," said Charlotte.

"I would, if I was sure he thought as much of me as I did of him."

Charlotte looked at her proudly. "I'm sure enough of that," said she.

Rose winced a little. "Then I wouldn't mind what I did," she persisted, stubbornly.

"Well, I would," said Charlotte; "but maybe I don't care. Maybe all this isn't as hard for me as it would be for another girl."

Charlotte's voice broke, but she tossed her head back with a proud motion; she took up the dusting-cloth and fell to work again.

"Oh, Charlotte!" said Rose; "I didn't mean that. Of course I know you care. It's awful. It was only because I didn't see how you could seem so calm; it ain't like me. Of course I know you feel bad enough underneath. Your wedding-clothes all done and everything. They are pretty near all done, ain't they, Charlotte?"

"Yes," said Charlotte. "They're--pretty near--done." She tried to speak steadily, but her voice failed. Suddenly she threw herself on the bed and hid her face, and her whole body heaved and twisted with great sobs.

"Oh, poor Charlotte, don't!" Rose cried, wringing her own hands; her face quivered, but she did not weep.

"Maybe I don't care," sobbed Charlotte; "maybe--I don't care."

"Oh, Charlotte!" Rose looked at Charlotte's piteous girlish shoulders shaken with sobs, and the fair prostrate girlish head. Charlotte all drawn up in this little heap upon the bed looked very young and helpless. All her womanly stateliness, which made her seem so superior to Rose, had vanished. Rose pulled her chair close to the bed, sat down, and laid her little thin hand on Charlotte's arm, and Charlotte directly felt it hot through her sleeve. "Don't, Charlotte," Rose said; "I'm sorry I spoke so."

"Maybe I don't care," Charlotte sobbed out again. "Maybe I don't."

"Oh, Charlotte, I'm sorry," Rose said, trembling. "I do know you care; don't you feel so bad because I said that."

Rose tightened her grasp on Charlotte's arm; her voice changed suddenly. "Look here, Charlotte," said she, "I'll do anything in the world I can to help you; I promise you that, and I mean it, honest."

Charlotte reached around a hand, and clasped her cousin's.

"I'm sorry I spoke so," Rose said.

"Never mind," Charlotte responded, chokingly. She sobbed a little longer from pure inertia of grief; then she raised herself, shaking off Rose's hand. "It's all right," said she; "I needn't have minded; I know you didn't mean anything. It was just--the last straw, and--when you said that about my wedding-clothes--"

"Oh, Charlotte, you did speak about them yourself first," Rose said, deprecatingly.

"I did, so nobody else would," returned Charlotte. She wiped her eyes, drooping her stained face away from her cousin with a kind of helpless shame; then she smoothed her hair with the palms of her hands. "I know you didn't mean any harm, Rose," she added, presently.

"I got my silk dress done last Wednesday; I wanted to tell you."

Charlotte tried to smile at Rose with her poor swollen lips and her reddened eyes.

"I'm sorry I said anything," Rose repeated; "I ought to have known it would make you feel bad, Charlotte."

"No, you hadn't. I was terrible silly. Don't you want to see my dress, Rose?"

"Oh, Charlotte! you don't want to show it to me?"

"Yes, I do. I want you to see it--before I pack it away. It's in the north chamber."

Rose followed Charlotte out of the room across the passageway to the north chamber. Charlotte had had one brother, who had died some ten years before, when he was twenty. The north chamber had been his room, the bureau drawers were packed with his clothes, and the silk hat which had been the pride of his early manhood hung on the nail where he had left it, and also his Sunday coat. His mother would not have them removed, but kept them there, with frequent brushings, to guard against dust and moths.

Always when Charlotte entered this small long room, which was full of wavering lines from its uneven floor and walls and ceiling and the long arabesques on its old blue-and-white paper, whose green paper curtains with fringed white dimity ones drooping over them were always drawn, and in summertime when the windows were open undulated in the wind, she had the sense of a presence, dim, but as positive as the visions she had used to have of faces in the wandering design of the old wall-paper when she had studied it in her childhood. Ever since her brother's death she had had this sense of his presence in his room; now she thought no more of it than of any familiar figure.

All the grief at his death had vanished, but she never entered his old room that the thought of him did not rise up before her and stay with her while she remained.

Now, when she opened the door, and the opposite green and white curtains flew out in the draught towards her, they were no more evident than this presence to which she now gave no thought, and pushed by her brother's memory without a glance.

Rose followed her to the bed. A white linen sheet was laid over the chintz counterpane. Charlotte lifted the sheet.

"I took the last stitch on it Wednesday night," she said, in a hushed voice.

"Didn't he come that night?"

"I finished it before he came."

"Did he see it?"

Charlotte nodded. The two girls stood looking solemnly at the silk dress.

"You can't see it here; it's too dark," said Charlotte, and she rolled up a window curtain.

"Yes, I can see better," said Rose, in a whisper. "It's beautiful, Charlotte."

The dress was spread widely over the bed in crisp folds. It was purple, plaided vaguely with cloudy lines of white and delicate rose-color. Over it lay a silvery lustre that was the very light of the silken fabric.

Rose felt it reverently. "How thick it is!" said she.

"Yes, it's a good piece," Charlotte replied.

"You thought you'd have purple?"

"Yes, he liked it."

"Well, it's pretty, and it's becoming to you."

Charlotte took up the skirt, and slipped it, loud with silken whispers, over her head. It swept out around her in a great circle; she looked like a gorgeous inverted bell-flower.

"It's beautiful," Rose said.

Charlotte's face, gazing downward at the silken breadths, had quite its natural expression. It was as if her mind in spite of herself would stop at old doors.

"Try on the waist," pleaded Rose.

Charlotte slipped off her calico waist, and thrust her firm white arms into the flaring silken sleeves of the wedding-gown. Her neck arose from it with a grand curve. She stood before the glass and strained the buttons together, frowning importantly.

"It fits you like a glove," Rose murmured, admiringly, smoothing Charlotte's glossy back.

"I've got a spencer-cape to wear over my neck to meeting," Charlotte said, and she opened the upper-most drawer in the chest and took out a worked muslin cape, and adjusted it carefully over her shoulders, pinning it across her bosom with a little brooch of her brother's hair in a rim of gold.

"It's elegant," said Rose.