n her soft, delicate voice. "I
have had it dried and pressed. It is not hurt. I thought you would not
mind," she concluded.

"It does not matter at all--not in the least," I said unhappily.

I am quite sure now that she meant me to speak then. I can recall the
way she fixed her eyes on me, serene and expectant. She was waiting. But
to save my life I could not. And she did not. Had she gone as far as she
had the strength to go? Or was this again one of those curious pacts of
hers--if I spoke or was silent, it was to be?

I do not know.

I do know that we were both silent and that at last, with a quick
breath, she reached out and thumped on the floor with a cane that stood
beside the bed until a girl came running up from below stairs.

"Get the shawl, Fanny, dear," said Miss Emily, "and wrap it up for Miss
Blakiston."

I wanted desperately, while the girl left the room to obey, to say
something helpful, something reassuring. But I could not. My voice
failed me. And Miss Emily did not give me another opportunity. She
thanked me rather formally for the flowers I had brought from her
garden, and let me go at last with the parcel under my arm, without
further reference to it. The situation was incredible.

Somehow I had the feeling that Miss Emily would never reopen the subject
again. She had given me my chance, at who knows what cost, and I had not
taken it. There had been something in her good-by--I can not find words
for it, but it was perhaps a finality, an effect of a closed door--that
I felt without being able to analyze.

I walked back to the house, refusing the offices of Mr. Staley, who met
me on the road. I needed to think. But thinking took me nowhere. Only
one conclusion stood out as a result of a mile and a half of mental
struggle. Something must be done. Miss Emily ought to be helped. She was
under a strain that was killing her.

But to help I should know the facts. Only, were there any facts to know?
Suppose--just by way of argument, for I did not believe it--that the
confession was true; how could I find out anything about it? Five years
was a long time. I could not go to the neighbors. They were none too
friendly as it was. Besides, the secret, if there was one, was not mine,
but was Miss Emily's.

I reached home at last, and smuggled the shawl into the house. I had no
intention of explaining its return to Maggie. Yet, small as it was in
its way, it offered a problem at once. For Maggie has a pene