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The boy dragged the trunk up the fine gravel-walk, but before he reached the steps leading up to the piazza, for the house stood on a terrace, the front door opened and a fair, frizzled head of a very large and handsome woman appeared. She held up her black silk skirt, disclosing voluminous ruffles of starched embroidery, and waited for Rebecca. She smiled placidly, her pink, double-chinned face widened and dimpled, but her blue eyes were wary and calculating. She extended her hand as Rebecca climbed the steps.

“This is Miss Flint, I suppose,” said she.

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Rebecca, noticing with bewilderment a curious expression compounded of fear and defiance on the other’s face.

“Your letter only arrived this morning,” said Mrs. Dent, in a steady voice. Her great face was a uniform pink, and her china- blue eyes were at once aggressive and veiled with secrecy.

“Yes, I hardly thought you’d get my letter,” replied Rebecca. “I felt as if I could not wait to hear from you before I came. I supposed you would be so situated that you could have me a little while without putting you out too much, from what John used to write me about his circumstances, and when I had that money so unexpected I felt as if I must come for Agnes. I suppose you will be willing to give her up. You know she’s my own blood, and of course she’s no relation to you, though you must have got attached to her. I know from her picture what a sweet girl she must be, and John always said she looked like her own mother, and Grace was a beautiful woman, if she was my sister.”

Rebecca stopped and stared at the other woman in amazement and alarm. The great handsome blonde creature stood speechless, livid, gasping, with her hand to her heart, her lips parted in a horrible caricature of a smile.

“Are you sick!” cried Rebecca, drawing near. “Don’t you want me to get you some water!”

Then Mrs. Dent recovered herself with a great effort. “It is nothing,” she said. “I am subject to–spells. I am over it now. Won’t you come in, Miss Flint?”

As she spoke, the beautiful deep-rose colour suffused her face, her blue eyes met her visitor’s with the opaqueness of turquoise–with a revelation of blue, but a concealment of all behind.

Rebecca followed her hostess in, and the boy, who had waited quiescently, climbed the steps with the trunk. But before they entered the door a strange thing happened. On the upper terrace close to the piazza-post, grew a great rose-bush, and on it, late in the season though it was, one small red, perfect rose.

Rebecca looked at it, and the other woman extended her hand with a quick gesture. “Don’t you pick that rose!” she brusquely cried.

Rebecca drew herself up with stiff dignity.

“I ain’t in the habit of picking other folks’ roses without leave,” said she.

As Rebecca spoke she started violently, and lost sight of her resentment, for something singular happened. Suddenly the rose- bush was agitated violently as if by a gust of wind, yet it was a remarkably still day. Not a leaf of the hydrangea standing on the terrace close to the rose trembled.

“What on earth–” began Rebecca, then she stopped with a gasp at the sight of the other woman’s face. Although a face, it gave somehow the impression of a desperately clutched hand of secrecy.

“Come in!” said she in a harsh voice, which seemed to come forth from her chest with no intervention of the organs of speech. “Come into the house. I’m getting cold out here.”

“What makes that rose-bush blow so when their isn’t any wind?” asked Rebecca, trembling with vague horror, yet resolute.

“I don’t see as it is blowing,” returned the woman calmly. And as she spoke, indeed, the bush was quiet.