g from Ann Eliza; and the
elder sister, seeing the gesture, continued her task with lowered eyes.
She undressed Evelina as quickly as she could, and wrapping her in the
plaid dressing-gown put her to bed, and spread her own shawl and her
sister's cloak above the blanket.

"Where's the old red comfortable?" Evelina asked, as she sank down on
the pillow.

"The comfortable? Oh, it was so hot and heavy I never used it after you
went--so I sold that too. I never could sleep under much clothes."

She became aware that her sister was looking at her more attentively.

"I guess you've been in trouble too," Evelina said.

"Me? In trouble? What do you mean, Evelina?"

"You've had to pawn the things, I suppose," Evelina continued in a weary
unmoved tone. "Well, I've been through worse than that. I've been to
hell and back."

"Oh, Evelina--don't say it, sister!" Ann Eliza implored, shrinking
from the unholy word. She knelt down and began to rub her sister's feet
beneath the bedclothes.

"I've been to hell and back--if I AM back," Evelina repeated. She
lifted her head from the pillow and began to talk with a sudden feverish
volubility. "It began right away, less than a month after we were
married. I've been in hell all that time, Ann Eliza." She fixed her eyes
with passionate intentness on Ann Eliza's face. "He took opium. I didn't
find it out till long afterward--at first, when he acted so strange, I
thought he drank. But it was worse, much worse than drinking."

"Oh, sister, don't say it--don't say it yet! It's so sweet just to have
you here with me again."

"I must say it," Evelina insisted, her flushed face burning with a kind
of bitter cruelty. "You don't know what life's like--you don't know
anything about it--setting here safe all the while in this peaceful
place."

"Oh, Evelina--why didn't you write and send for me if it was like that?"

"That's why I couldn't write. Didn't you guess I was ashamed?"

"How could you be? Ashamed to write to Ann Eliza?"

Evelina raised herself on her thin elbow, while Ann Eliza, bending over,
drew a corner of the shawl about her shoulder.

"Do lay down again. You'll catch your death."

"My death? That don't frighten me! You don't know what I've been
through." And sitting upright in the old mahogany bed, with flushed
cheeks and chattering teeth, and Ann Eliza's trembling arm clasping the
shawl about her neck, Evelina poured out her story. It was a tale
of misery and humiliatio