.

But this delays my tale, which is one of action rather than reflection.
I had naturally expected that with the appearance of the elder Miss
Knollys I should be taken to my room; but, on the contrary, she sat down
and with an apologetic air informed me that she was sorry she could not
show me the customary attentions. Circumstances over which she had no
control had made it impossible, she said, for her to offer me the
guest-chamber, but if I would be so good as to accept another for this
one night, she would endeavor to provide me with better accommodations
on the morrow.

Satisfied of the almost painful nature of their poverty and determined
to submit to privations rather than leave a house so imbued with
mystery, I hastened to assure her that any room would be acceptable to
me; and with a display of good feeling not wholly insincere, began to
gather up my wraps in anticipation of being taken at once up-stairs.

But Miss Knollys again surprised me by saying that my room was not yet
ready; that they had not been able to complete all their arrangements,
and begged me to make myself at home in the room where I was till
evening.

As this was asking a good deal of a woman of my years, fresh from a
railroad journey and with natural habits of great neatness and order, I
felt somewhat disconcerted, but hiding my feelings in consideration of
reasons before given, replaced my bundles on the table and endeavored to
make the best of a somewhat trying situation.

Launching at once into conversation, I began, as with Lucetta, to talk
about her mother. I had never known, save in the vaguest way, why Mrs.
Knollys had taken the journey which had ended in her death and burial in
a foreign land. Rumor had it that she had gone abroad for her health
which had begun to fail after the birth of Lucetta; but as Rumor had not
added why she had gone unaccompanied by her husband or children, there
remained much which these girls might willingly tell me, which would be
of the greatest interest to me. But Miss Knollys, intentionally or
unintentionally, assumed an air so cold at my well meant questions, that
I desisted from pressing them, and began to talk about myself in a way
which I hoped would establish really friendly relations between us and
make it possible for her to tell me later, if not at the present moment,
what it was that weighed so heavily upon the household, that no one
could enter this home without feeling the shadow of the s