Then she recovered her mental poise and put the hateful memories away from her as she went steadily up the narrow stairs and along the hall with its curious slant as the house had settled , to her own room under the north-western eaves . When she had put out her light and gone to bed she found that she could not sleep . She pretended to believe that it was the noise of the storm that kept her awake . Not even to herself would Emily confess that she was waiting and listening nervously for John 's return home . That would have been to admit a weakness , and Emily Fair , like Amelia , despised weakness . Every few minutes a gust of wind smote the house , with a roar as of a wild beast , and bombarded Emily 's window with a volley of rattling drops . In the silences that came between the gusts she heard the soft , steady pouring of the rain on the garden paths below , mingled with a faint murmur that came up from the creek beyond the barns where the pine boughs were thrashing in the storm . Emily suddenly thought of a weird story she had once read years before and long forgotten -- a story of a soul that went out in a night of storm and blackness and lost its way between earth and heaven . She shuddered and drew the counterpane over her face . `` Of all things I hate a fall storm most , '' she muttered . `` It frightens me . '' Somewhat to her surprise -- for even her thoughts were generally well under the control of her unbending will -- she could not help thinking of Stephen -- thinking of him not tenderly or remorsefully , but impersonally , as of a man who counted for nothing in her life . It was so strange to think of Stephen being ill . She had never known him to have a day 's sickness in his life before . She looked back over her life much as if she were glancing with a chill interest at a series of pictures which in no way concerned her . Scene after scene , face after face , flashed out on the background of the darkness . Emily 's mother had died at her birth , but Amelia Phillips , twenty years older than the baby sister , had filled the vacant place so well and with such intuitive tenderness that Emily had never been conscious of missing a mother . John Phillips , too , the grave , silent , elder brother , loved and petted the child . Woodford people were fond of saying that John and Amelia spoiled Emily shamefully . Emily Phillips had never been like the other Woodford girls and had no friends of her own age among them .
Her uncommon beauty won her many lovers , but she had never cared XXXXX any of them until Stephen Fair , fifteen years her senior , had come a-wooing to the old , gray , willow-girdled Phillips homestead .
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