"Tell me the whole story," said Mabel, turning round so as to face Lucy as the phaeton passed out of sight.
"There's not much to tell. Mr. Morgan has always lived here, and so has Miss Rood. He lives alone with a housekeeper in that fine house at the end of the street, and she entirely alone in that little white house over there among the apple-trees. All the people who knew them when they were young are dead, gone away, or moved off. They are relics of a past generation, and are really about as much shut up to each other for sympathy as an old married couple."
"Well, why on earth are n't they married?"
"People hereabouts got tired of asking that full thirty years ago," replied Lucy, with a little shrug. "Even the gossips long since wore out the subject, and I believe we have all of us forgotten that there is anything peculiar about their relations. He calls on her two or three times a week, and takes her out driving on pleasant days; escorts her to places of amusement or social gatherings when either of them cares to go, which is n't often; and wherever they are, people take it for granted they will pair off together. He is never seen with any other lady."
"It's very strange," said Mabel thoughtfully, "and I'm sure it's very romantic. Queer old couple! I wonder how they really feel toward each other, and whether they would n't like to be married?"
Awhile after she suddenly demanded, "Don't you think Miss Rood looks like me?"
Lucy laughed at first, but upon closer inspection of the fair questioner admitted that there might be some such resemblance as the shriveled apples brought up from the cellar in spring bear to the plump, rosy-cheeked beauties that went down in October.
If Mr. Morgan and Miss Rood, as they rode past, had chanced to overhear Mabel's question why they had not married, it would have affected them very differently. He would have been startled by the novelty of an idea that had not occurred to him in twenty years, but the blush on her cheek would have been one of painful consciousness.
As boy and girl they had been each other's chosen companion, and as young man and maiden their childish preference had bloomed into a reciprocal love. Thanks to the freedom and simplicity of village life, they enjoyed as lovers a constant and easy familiarity and daily association almost as complete in sympathy of mind and heart as anything marriage could offer. There were none of the usual obstacles to incite them to matrimony. They were never even formally engaged, so wholly did they take it for granted that they should marry. It was so much a matter of course that there was no hurry at all about it; and besides, so long as they had it to look forward to, the foreground of life was illuminated for them: it was still morning. Mr. Morgan was constitutionally of a dreamy and unpractical turn, a creature of habits and a victim of ruts; and as years rolled on he became more and more satisfied with these half-friendly, half-loverlike relations. He never found the time when it seemed an object to marry, and now, for very many years, the idea had not even occurred to him as possible; and so far was he from the least suspicion that Miss Rood's experience had not been precisely similar to his own, that he often congratulated himself on the fortunate coincidence.
Time cures much, and many years ago Miss Hood had recovered from the first bitterness of discovering that his love had become insensibly transformed into a very tender but perfectly peaceful friendship. No one but him had ever touched her heart, and she had no interest in life besides him. Since she was not to be his wife, she was glad to be his lifelong, tender, self-sacrificing friend. So she raked the ashes over the fire in her heart, and left him to suppose that it had gone out as in his. Nor was she without compensation in their friendship. It was with a delightful thrill that she felt how fully in mind and heart he leaned and depended upon her, and the unusual and romantic character of their relations in some degree consoled her for the disappointment of womanly aspirations by a feeling of distinction. She was not like other women: her lot was set apart and peculiar. She looked down upon her sex. The conventionality of women's lives renders their vanity peculiarly susceptible to a suggestion that their destiny is in any respect unique, —a fact that has served the turn of many a seducer before now. To-day, after returning from his drive with Miss Rood, Mr. Morgan had walked in his garden, and as the evening breeze arose, it bore to his nostrils that first indescribable flavor of autumn which warns us that the soul of Summer has departed from her yet glowing body. He was very sensitive to these changes of the year, and, obeying an impulse that had been familiar to him in all unusual moods his life long, he left the house after tea and turned his steps down the street. As he stopped at Miss Rood's gate, Lucy, Mabel, and George Hammond were under the apple-trees in the garden opposite.