`` I will not open that chest without Eliza 's permission . She confided it to my care when she went away , and I promised that it should never be opened until she came for it . '' `` Poor Eliza , '' said Mrs. DeLisle thoughtfully . `` I wonder what she is like now . Very much changed , like all the rest of us , I suppose . It is almost thirty years since she was here . How pretty she was ! '' `` I never approved of her , '' said Grandmother brusquely . `` She was a sentimental , fanciful creature . She might have married well but she preferred to waste her life pining over the memory of a man who was not worthy to untie the shoelace of a Laurance . '' Mrs. DeLisle sighed softly and made no reply . People said that she had had her own romance in her youth and that her mother had sternly repressed it . I had heard that her marriage with Mr. DeLisle was loveless on her part and proved very unhappy . But he had been dead many years , and Aunt Winnifred never spoke of him . `` I have made up my mind what to do , '' said Grandmother decidedly . `` I will write to Eliza and ask her if I may open the chest to see if the moths have got into it . If she refuses , well and good . I have no doubt that she will refuse . She will cling to her old sentimental ideas as long as the breath is in her body . '' I rather avoided the old chest after this .
It took on a new significance in my eyes and seemed to me like the tomb XXXXX something -- possibly some dead and buried romance of the past .
after as for if like of on to until with