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 for any of them until Stephen Fair , fifteen years her senior , had come a-wooing to the old , gray , willow-girdled Phillips homestead . Amelia and John Phillips never liked him .
There was an ancient feud between the families that had died out XXXXX the younger generation , but was still potent with the older .
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