ilent as a statue, waiting for what more might
come. But her mother shut her lips tightly, and turned her head away.

A long time elapsed before she was able to read in her mother's confused
utterances anything to which she could attach a meaning. At last Mrs.
Dinneford spoke out again, and with an abruptness that startled her:

"Not another dollar, sir! Remember, you don't hold _all_ the winning
cards!"

Edith held her breath, and sat motionless. Her mother muttered and
mumbled incoherently for a while, and then said, sharply,

"I said I would ruin him, and I've done it!"

"Ruin who?" asked Edith, in a repressed voice.

This question, instead of eliciting an answer, as Edith had hoped,
brought her mother back to semi-consciousness. She rose again in bed,
and looked at her daughter in the same frightened way she had done a
little while before, then laid herself over on the pillows again. Her
lips were tightly shut.

Edith was almost wild with suspense. The clue to that sad and painful
mystery which was absorbing her life seemed almost in her grasp. A
word from those closely-shut lips, and she would have certainty for
uncertainty. But she waited and waited until she grew faint, and still
the lips kept silent.

But after a while Mrs. Dinneford grew uneasy, and began talking. She
moved her head from side to side, threw her arms about restlessly and
appeared greatly disturbed.

"Not dead, Mrs. Bray?" she cried out, at last, in a clear, strong voice.

Edith became fixed as a statue once more.

A few moments, and Mrs. Dinneford added,

"No, no! I won't have her coming after me. More money! You're a
vampire!"

Then she muttered, and writhed and distorted her face like one in some
desperate struggle. Edith shuddered as she stood over her.

After this wild paroxysm Mrs. Dinneford grew more quiet, and seemed to
sleep. Edith remained sitting by the bedside, her thoughts intent on the
strange sentences that had fallen from her Mother's lips. What mystery
lay behind them? Of what secret were they an obscure revelation? "Not
dead!" Who not dead? And again, "It's dead! You know that; and the
woman's dead, too." Then it was plain that she had heard aright the name
of the person who had called on her mother, and about whom her mother
had made a mystery. It was Bray; if not, why the anxiety to make her
believe it Gray? And this woman had been her nurse. It was plain, also,
that money was being paid for keeping secret. Wh