It was as
Angela, the youngest, was chastising her for some offence, that Sabrina,
the eldest, looked with wondering eyes on the babe in the gipsy's sling. She approached on tiptoe. "May I look at it, please?" she asked timidly. The gipsy set one shoulder forward, and Sabrina put the shawl gently
aside, peering at the dusky brown morsel within. "Sometime, perhaps--if I'm very careful--"

Sabrina ventured diffidently, "--if I'm _very_ careful--may I hold it?" Before replying, the gipsy once more turned her almond eyes towards Aunt
Rachel's chair. Aunt Rachel had been awakened for the conclusion of
Flora's funeral, but her eyes were closed again now, and once more her
cheek was dropped in that tender suggestive little gesture, and she
rocked. But you could see that she was not properly asleep.... It was,
somehow, less to Sabrina, still peering at the babe in the sling, than to
Aunt Rachel, apparently asleep, that the gipsy seemed to reply. "You'll know some day, little missis, that a wean knows its own pair of
arms," her seductive voice came. And Aunt Rachel heard. She opened her eyes with a start. The little
regular noise of the rocker ceased. She turned her head quickly;
tremulously she began to knit again; and, as her eyes rested on the
sidelong eyes of the gipsy woman, there was an expression in them that
almost resembled fright. II

They began to deck the great hall-kitchen for Christmas, but the snow
still lay thick over hill and valley, and the gipsies' caravans remained
by the broken wall where the drifts had overtaken them. Though all the
chairs were mended, Annabel still came daily to the farm, sat on the box
they used to cover the sewing machine, and wove mats. As she wove them,
Aunt Rachel knitted, and from time to time fragments of talk passed
between the two women. It was always the white-haired lady who spoke
first, and Annabel made all sorts of salutes and obeisances with her eyes
before replying. "I have not seen your husband," Aunt Rachel said to Annabel one day. (The
children at the other end of the apartment had converted a chest into an
altar, and were solemnising the nuptials of the resurrected Flora and
Jack, the raffish sailor-doll.) Annabel made roving play with her eyes. "He is up at the caravans, lady
dear," she replied. "Is there anything Annabel can bid him do?" "Nothing, thank you," said Aunt Rachel. For a minute the gipsy watched Aunt Rachel, and then she got up from the
sewing machine box and crossed the floor. She leaned so close towards her
that she had to put up a hand to steady the babe at her back. "Lady dear," she murmured with irresistible softness, "your husband died,
didn't he?" On Aunt Rachel's finger was a ring, but it was not a wedding ring. It was
a hoop of pearls. "I have never had a husband," she said. The gipsy glanced at the ring. "Then that is--?" "That is a betrothal ring," Aunt Rachel replied. "Ah!..." said Annabel. Then, after a minute, she drew still closer. Her eyes were fixed on Aunt
Rachel's, and the insinuating voice was very low. "Ah!... And did _it_ die too, lady dear?" Again came that quick, half-affrighted look into Aunt Rachel's face. Her
eyes avoided those of the gipsy, sought them, and avoided them again. "Did what die?" she asked slowly and guardedly.... The child at the gipsy's back did not need suck; nevertheless, Annabel's
fingers worked at her bosom, and she moved the sling. As the child
settled, Annabel gave Aunt Rachel a long look. "Why do you rock?" she asked slowly. Aunt Rachel was trembling. She did not reply. In a voice soft as sliding
water the gipsy continued:

"Lady dear, we are a strange folk to you, and even among us there are
those who shuffle the pack of cards and read the palm when silver has
been put upon it, knowing nothing... But some of us _see_--some of us
_see_." It was more than a minute before Aunt Rachel spoke. "You are a woman, and you have your babe at your breast now.... Every
woman sees the thing you speak of." But the gipsy shook her head. "You speak of seeing with the heart. I
speak of eyes--these eyes." Again came a long pause. Aunt Rachel had given a little start, but had
become quiet again. When at last she spoke it was in a voice scarcely
audible. "That cannot be. I know what you mean, but it cannot be.... He died
on the eve of his wedding. For my bridal clothes they made me black
garments instead. It is long ago, and now I wear neither black nor white,
but--" her hands made a gesture. Aunt Rachel always dressed as if to suit
a sorrow that Time had deprived of bitterness, in such a tender and
fleecy grey as one sees in the mists that lie like lawn over hedgerow
and copse early of a midsummer's morning. "Therefore," she resumed, "your
heart may see, but your eyes cannot see that which never was." But there came a sudden note of masterfulness into the gipsy's voice. "With my eyes--_these_ eyes," she repeated, pointing to them. Aunt Rachel kept her own eyes obstinately on her knitting needles. "None
except I have seen it. It is not to be seen," she said. The gipsy sat suddenly erect. "It is not so. Keep still in your chair," she ordered, "and I will tell
you when--"

It was a curious thing that followed. As if all the will went out of
her, Aunt Rachel sat very still; and presently her hands fluttered and
dropped. The gipsy sat with her own hands folded over the mat on her
knees. Several minutes passed; then, slowly, once more that sweetest of
smiles stole over Aunt Rachel's cheeks. Once more her head dropped. Her
hands moved. Noiselessly on the rockers that the gipsy had padded with
felt the chair began to rock. Annabel lifted one hand. "_Dovo se li_" she said. "It is there." Aunt Rachel did not appear to hear her. With that ineffable smile still
on her face, she rocked....

Then, after some minutes, there crossed her face such a look as visits
the face of one who, waking from sleep, strains his faculties to
recapture some blissful and vanishing vision....

"_Jal_--it is gone," said the gipsy woman. Aunt Rachel opened her eyes again. She repeated dully after Annabel:

"It is gone." "Ghosts," the gipsy whispered presently, "are of the dead. Therefore it
must have lived." But again Aunt Rachel shook her head. "It never lived." "You were young, and beautiful?..." Still the shake of the head. "He died on the eve of his wedding. They
took my white garments away and gave me black ones. How then could
it have lived?" "Without the kiss, no.... But sometimes a woman will lie through her
life, and at the graveside still will lie.... Tell me the truth." But they were the same words that Aunt Rachel repeated: "He died on the
eve of his wedding; they took away my wedding garments...." From her lips
a lie could hardly issue. The gipsy's face became grave....

She broke another long silence. "I believe," she said at last. "It is a new kind--but no more wonderful
than the other. The other I have seen, now I have seen this also. Tell
me, does it come to any other chair?"