Marianne Brandon sat alone in the library of Delaford, the home her husband had shared with her for more than thirty years. It now belonged, by rights, to their eldest son—a fine young man with an intelligent and personable young wife, a young man who spoke and acted with the same honorable motives his father had throughout their marriage. She would go on living here, he had assured her, for as long as she should wish to. Marianne wasn't sure. She looked around her—at the books they had shared; the pianoforte on which they had practiced their first duets; the sheet music he had purchased for her when on honeymoon so long ago in Austria; the painted portrait he had had made of her when she had still been in the bloom of youth; the fireplace—now cold—by which they once had sought warmth in one another's embrace. To be surrounded by so many memories of him, but to be without him—it seemed too much to bear. This was the price of marrying someone older, she knew. And yet, she would not have traded her years of happiness with him for a much longer time with any other man.

Two nights ago, before he had drifted off to sleep for the last time, she had studied him—paler, more drawn than he had ever looked. He had closed the book he had been reading and looked up at her, smiling quizzically. "What is the matter, my love?"

"My darling Colonel—do you still love me? Now that I am no longer a young beauty?"

He had chuckled, and replied, "My Marianne, I have always loved you, nearly from the moment I met you. And I always will."

She had settled down into the nook between his arm and his side, her hand pressing against what would be his last hundreds of heartbeats. And he had licked his fingers and extinguished the candle.