Chapter VII: Keziah’s Story

A SOLILOQUY.

Doris is here, and has been for four weeks, and in spite of myself I am drawn to her more and more every day. I did not want her to come, and I meant to be cold and distant to her, but when she looked at me with something in her blue eyes like Gerold, I began to soften, while the sight of Gerold’s trunk unnerved me wholly. I gave it to him when he first went away to college, and I remember so well how pleased he was, and how he put his arms around me and kissed me, as he thanked me for it, and said, “Auntie, the trunk is so big that I shall not bring it home at my vacations, but leave it in New Haven. So when you see it again it will be full of honors, and I shall be an A. B., of whom you will be so proud.”

God forgive me if I have done wrong; that was twenty-five years ago, and Gerold is dead, and his trunk was brought back to me by his daughter, whose face is not his face, although very, very beautiful. I acknowledge that to myself, and rebel against it a little, as I mentally contrast it with Dorothea’s and wonder what Grant will think of it. I have surely done well to keep him from all knowledge of her until he was engaged to Dorothea, and even now I tremble a little for the result when he is thrown in contact with her every day, for aside from her wonderful beauty there is a grace and charm about her that Dorothea lacks, and had I seen her before she came here I should have kept her at the North until after Grant’s marriage, which I mean shall take place as early as Christmas.

He is coming home sooner than I expected; indeed he sails in two or three days, and I must tell her at once that she has a cousin, and in some way put her on her honor not to try to attract him. It is a difficult thing to do, for the girl has a spirit of her own, and there is sometimes a flash in her eyes which I do not like to meet. I saw it first when I said something derogatory of her mother. How her eyes blazed, and how grand she was in her defense, and how I respected her for it!

Ah me, that Hepburn lease! What mischief it has wrought, and how the ghosts of the past haunt me at times, when I remember the stand I have taken to save our house from ruin! Beriah says I am a monomaniac on the subject, and also that she doubts the validity of the lease. But that does not matter. My father bade me respect Amos Hepburn’s wishes, and I shall, to the letter, if Grant does not marry Dorothea.

I must stop now and superintend the opening of a box which by some mistake Grant left at Cambridge and did not think necessary to have forwarded to us until recently, when he gave orders to have it sent us by express, It has in it a little of everything, he wrote, and among the rest a picture which he thinks will interest and puzzle us as it has him. I hear Tom hammering at the box, and must go and see to it.