Jane of Lantern Hill

Once, when Jane had been sitting in the Cadillac, one dark, dingy morning in a snowy world, waiting for Frank to take her to St. Agatha’s, as he did every day, she had heard two women, who were standing on the street-corner, talking about it. “Did you ever see such a dead house?” said the younger. “It looks as if it had been dead for ages.” “That house died thirty years ago, when Robert Kennedy died,” said the older woman. “Before that it was a lively place. Nobody in Toronto entertained more. Robert Kennedy liked social life. He was a very handsome, friendly man. People could never understand how he came to marry Mrs. James Anderson . . . a widow with three children. She was Victoria Moore to begin with, you know, old Colonel Moore’s daughter . . . a very aristocratic family. But she was pretty as a picture then and was she crazy about him! My dear, she worshipped him. People said she was never willing to let him out of her sight for a moment. And they said she hadn’t cared for her first husband at all. Robert Kennedy died when they had been married about fifteen years . . . died just after his first baby was born, I’ve heard.” “Does she live all alone in that castle?” “Oh, no. Her two daughters live with her. One of them is a widow or something . . . and there’s a granddaughter, I believe. They say old Mrs. Kennedy is a terrible tyrant, but the younger daughter . . . the widow . . . is gay enough and goes to everything you see reported in Saturday Evening. Very pretty . . . and can she dress! She was the Kennedy one and took after her father. She must hate having all her fine friends coming to Gay Street. It’s worse than dead . . . it’s decayed. But I can remember when Gay Street was one of the most fashionable residential streets in town. Look at it now.”