d to her temples, her eyes on the ground; perfectly calm, but
very pale.

'Cytherea,' she said in a whisper, 'come here.'

Cytherea went close.

'Something very serious has taken place,' she said again, and then
paused, with a tremulous movement of her mouth.

'Yes,' said Cytherea.

'My father. He was found dead in his bed this morning.'

'Dead!' echoed the younger woman. It seemed impossible that the
announcement could be true; that knowledge of so great a fact could be
contained in a statement so small.

'Yes, dead,' murmured Miss Aldclyffe solemnly. 'He died alone, though
within a few feet of me. The room we slept in is exactly over his own.'

Cytherea said hurriedly, 'Do they know at what hour?'

'The doctor says it must have been between two and three o'clock this
morning.'

'Then I heard him!'

'Heard him?'

'Heard him die!'

'You heard him die? What did you hear?'

'A sound I heard once before in my life--at the deathbed of my mother. I
could not identify it--though I recognized it. Then the dog howled: you
remarked it. I did not think it worth while to tell you what I had heard
a little earlier.' She looked agonized.

'It would have been useless,' said Miss Aldclyffe. 'All was over by that
time.' She addressed herself as much as Cytherea when she continued, 'Is
it a Providence who sent you here at this juncture that I might not be
left entirely alone?'

Till this instant Miss Aldclyffe had forgotten the reason of Cytherea's
seclusion in her own room. So had Cytherea herself. The fact now
recurred to both in one moment.

'Do you still wish to go?' said Miss Aldclyffe anxiously.

'I don't want to go now,' Cytherea had remarked simultaneously with the
other's question. She was pondering on the strange likeness which Miss
Aldclyffe's bereavement bore to her own; it had the appearance of being
still another call to her not to forsake this woman so linked to her
life, for the sake of any trivial vexation.

Miss Aldclyffe held her almost as a lover would have held her, and said
musingly--

'We get more and more into one groove. I now am left fatherless and
motherless as you were.' Other ties lay behind in her thoughts, but she
did not mention them.

'You loved your father, Cytherea, and wept for him?'

'Yes, I did. Poor papa!'

'I was always at variance with mine, and can't weep for him now! But you
must stay here always, and make a better woman of me.'

The compact was thus sealed, and