A charming spot was Silver-Fall, with its little dwelling half hidden by climbing roses and shadowy maples. Smooth as velvet was the lawn, with here and there a cluster of blue violets clinging timidly together, and hemmed by a silvery thread of bright laughing water, which, within a few rods of the cottage-door, suddenly leaped over a bed of rocks some twenty feet high, into the valley below. This gave it the name of Silver-Fall Cottage—all too enticing a spot it would seem to remain long unoccupied. Yet the snows of winter yielded to the gentle breath of spring, and the bright fruits of summer already decked the hedge-rows and the thicket, ere a tenant could be found, and then there came a letter to Mr. Humphreys from a widow lady living in a distant city, requiring the terms on which he would lease his pretty cottage.
They were favorable, it would seem, to her views, and in due time Mrs. Norton, her daughter Grace, and two female domestics, arrived at Silver-Fall.
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CHAPTER III.
One Fold of the Curtain drawn back.
A new comer in a country village is always sure to elicit more or less curiosity, and Mrs. Norton did not escape without her due share from the inhabitants of Grassmere. With telegraph speed it was found out that she was a lady between thirty and forty years of age, dressed in bombazine, and wore close mourning caps. Miss Norton was talked of as a slender, fair girl, with blue eyes, and long, flowing curls, and might be seventeen, perhaps twenty—of course, they could not be strictly accurate in this matter.
Bales of India matting were unrolled in the door-yard—crates of beautiful china unpacked in the piazza—sofas and chairs crept out from their rough traveling cases, displaying all the beauty of rosewood and damask, until finally by aid of all these means and appliances to boot, Mrs. Norton and her daughter were pronounced very genteel—but—
“But, I wonder what they are!” said Mrs. Humphreys to the deacon, as talking over these secular matters she handed him his second cup of coffee.
Not that the good lady had any doubt of their being bona fide flesh and blood; neither did she believe they were witches or fairies who had taken up their abode at Silver-Fall. “I wonder what they are!” must therefore be interpreted as “I wonder what church they attend,” or “what creed they profess.”
The deacon shook his head and looked solemn.