for me."

Now, without any warning, something that had been seething since her
breathless arrival took shape in my mind, and became--suspicion. What
if it had been Miss Emily who had called me the second time to the
telephone, and having established the connection, had waited, breathing
hard for--what?

It was fantastic, incredible in the light of that brilliant summer day.
I looked at her, dainty and exquisite as ever, her ruchings fresh and
white, her very face indicative of decorum and order, her wistful old
mouth still rather like a child's, her eyes, always slightly upturned
because of her diminutive height, so that she had habitually a look of
adoration.

"One of earth's saints," the rector had said to me on Sunday morning. "A
good woman, Miss Blakiston, and a sacrifice to an unworthy family."

Suspicion is like the rain. It falls on the just and on the unjust. And
that morning I began to suspect Miss Emily. I had no idea of what.

On my mentioning an errand in the village she promptly offered to take
me with her in the Staley hack. She had completely altered in manner.
The strain was gone. In her soft low voice, as we made our way to the
road, she told me the stories of some of the garden flowers.

"The climbing rose over the arch, my dear," she said, "my mother brought
from England on her wedding journey. People have taken cuttings from it
again and again, but the cuttings never thrive. A bad winter, and they
are gone. But this one has lived. Of course now and then it freezes
down."

She chattered on, and my suspicions grew more and more shadowy. They
would have gone, I think, had not Maggie called me back with a grocery
list.

"A sack of flour," she said, "and some green vegetables, and--Miss
Agnes, that woman was down on her knees beside the telephone!--and
bluing for the laundry, and I guess that's all."

The telephone! It was always the telephone. We drove on down the lane,
eyed somnolently by spotted cows and incurious sheep, and all the way
Miss Emily talked. She was almost garrulous. She asked the hackman about
his family and stopped the vehicle to pick up a peddler, overburdened
with his pack. I watched her with amazement. Evidently this was Mr.
Staley's Miss Emily. But it was not mine.

But I saw mine, too, that morning. It was when I asked the hackman to
put me down at the little telephone building. I thought she put her
hand to her throat, although the next moment she was only adjusting th