e
replied pantingly.

The light was breaking clearly in the east, and Miss Sherbourne opened
the front door. The two women stepped together into the garden.

"Everything seems quiet," said Mrs. Clarke, looking up at Alison's
window. "You are sure, if there is the slightest change, that Nurse will
call me? Then let us walk across the lawn. I want to talk to you. I must
speak now--at once, while I have the courage."

"Shall we sit here?" said Miss Sherbourne, indicating a bench that faced
the dawn.

The hour was strangely beautiful. The sky, flushing in tints of rose and
mauve, heralded the rising sun; the bushes were still masses of rich,
warm shadow, but a group of turn-cap lilies stood out fair and golden
against the dark background, shedding their heavy fragrance around. A
thrush had begun to stir in the laburnum tree, and piped his fine mellow
notes; and a blackbird answered from the elm opposite. The world was
waking to another day of wonderful, pulsing life.

"Weeping and heaviness may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the
morning," murmured Aunt Barbara softly.

Mrs. Clarke sat for a few moments gazing at the quiet scene. She was
still intensely agitated, and kept clasping and unclasping her hands
nervously upon her knee.

"I must speak," she began again hurriedly. "If I do not tell you now,
the resolution may go. When I saw my darling lie there, at the very gate
of death, I knew it was a judgment upon me for my long silence--my
criminal silence."

She paused, as if scarcely able to continue. She was weeping bitterly,
and her restless fingers pulled to pieces a rose that she had plucked
from a bush as she passed.

"I hardly know how to explain everything," she went on at last, "but
perhaps it will make it clearer if I begin at the beginning, and relate
the story of my life. Have you the patience to hear it? My sister
Madeleine and I were twins. My mother died in our infancy, and left no
other children, so we two were everything to each other. My father was a
clever but eccentric man, a student and an astronomer. He had never been
fond of company, and after my mother's death he shut himself up more
closely than ever, and became quite a recluse, devoting himself entirely
to his books and his telescope. Though he was fond of us in his way, we
did not see much of him, and he was always so reserved and silent that
we were shy and constrained in his presence. When we were old enough to
leave school, our