for me...

And when the sound of my playing rang through the halls of the mansion after some forty years of silence, my aunt came in and sat listening as if entranced... But she died that very night... She lay with a smile on her lips... I wonder, why did Mother Duncan shake her head and murmur, "Sleep in peace, for you did what you wished"? I could make no sense of that, but the Mother went down to the huts of the farmers living at the foot of the hill, and they summoned a priest... and the body was borne in stillness to the mansion's burial vault.

Morning came upon me... and the mansion was lonelier and more silent than was its wont... I was still in my bed when Mother Duncan came in to tell me that Aunt Myra had written her will long ago... and deposited it with her lawyer, Sam... Then she handed me the lawyer's address.

A smile of triumph hovered on her lips and stirred my curios-ity, so I went off to the lawyer to satisfy that curiosity... and I was stunned when he read me the will. Its purport was... that my aunt possessed a million and a half pounds, besides the mansion and its treasures... and that she bequeathed me all she owned, on one condition only: that I never marry... If I pre-ferred marriage, I was to leave the mansion at once and live in one of the huts standing at the foot of the green hill... and subsist on a meager allowance which the lawyer would hand me month by month.

I returned to the mansion with a whirlpool in my head... I entered, and there was Mother Duncan handing me a letter which contained the following:

My dear,

If you prefer marriage with poverty, then act on the advice

of a woman who has known the world: 1 — Make your young man understand that you have no fortune, lest he covet it and your marriage fail. 2 — Search whether there is anything disgraceful in his past, for he who grows up on a thing grows old on it. 3 — Beware lest he be a drunkard, for wine is the root of all vices... You have all my good wishes.

Myra

And I murmured, the letter in my hand, as though its writer stood before me... I have no need of this, Aunt, for I shall follow in your footsteps.

But I was deluded... for never was the mansion darker... nor the days more tedious than they were then... What was I to do all day long... The great notebook and its tales of men... I had learned them by heart... The

piano... its melodies made me feel flutterings in my heart that I had never known... The garden... the rustling of its trees whispered mockingly... A year... ten years... twenty... sixty... and after that, a gray-haired old crone with millions of pounds...

No, I shall not follow in your footsteps, Aunt... never...

I took up my pen... and chose from among my schoolmates three who used to talk of their brothers in front of me... and I wrote inviting them to spend a week as my guests...

And they came... I had decorated the mansion and brought its treasures out of their chests... and ordered the loveliest gowns from the most skillful of makers... All this while I laughed inwardly at Mother Duncan,

Our neighbor John carried me to the Silent Mansion