A MIDNIGHT VISITOR.
Now all this time, while the tragi-comedy of life was being played in
these three suburban villas, while on a commonplace stage love and humor
and fears and lights and shadows were so swiftly succeeding each other,
and while these three families, drifted together by fate, were shaping
each other's destinies and working out in their own fashion the strange,
intricate ends of human life, there were human eyes which watched over
every stage of the performance, and which were keenly critical of every
actor on it. Across the road beyond the green palings and the close-
cropped lawn, behind the curtains of their creeper-framed windows, sat
the two old ladies, Miss Bertha and Miss Monica Williams, looking out as
from a private box at all that was being enacted before them. The
growing friendship of the three families, the engagement of Harold
Denver with Clara Walker, the engagement of Charles Westmacott with her
sister, the dangerous fascination which the widow exercised over the
Doctor, the preposterous behavior of the Walker girls and the
unhappiness which they had caused their father, not one of these
incidents escaped the notice of the two maiden ladies.
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