me not to. Hester had never approved of mourning; she said that
if the heart did not mourn crape would not mend matters; and if
it did there was no need of the external trappings of woe. She
told me calmly, the night before she died, to go on wearing my
pretty dresses just as I had always worn them, and to make no
difference in my outward life because of her going.

"I know there will be a difference in your inward life," she said
wistfully.

And oh, there was! But sometimes I wondered uneasily, feeling
almost conscience-stricken, whether it were wholly because Hester
had left me--whether it were no partly because, for a second
time, I had shut the door of my heart in the face of love at her
bidding.

When I had dressed I went downstairs to the front door, and sat
on the sandstone steps under the arch of the Virginia creeper. I
was all alone, for Mary Sloane had gone to Avonlea.

It was a beautiful night; the full moon was just rising over the
wooded hills, and her light fell through the poplars into the
garden before me. Through an open corner on the western side I
saw the sky all silvery blue in the afterlight. The garden was
very beautiful just then, for it was the time of the roses, and
ours were all out--so many of them--great pink, and red, and
white, and yellow roses.

Hester had loved roses and could never have enough of them. Her
favorite bush was growing by the steps, all gloried over with