triumph?

"Letters!" she exclaimed; "two letters: let me see them, child--let me
see them! Perhaps they may be more valuable than you think."

The girl took them from her bosom, where she kept them as all that she
possessed of one gone that day into the tomb.

The old woman read them with slow eyes, but eager attention; and then
gave them back, saying, "That one you had better destroy as soon as
possible--it tells too much. But this first one keep, as you value your
own welfare--as you value your child's fortune, station, and happiness.
You can do much with this. Why, here are words that may make your father
a proud man. Hark! I hear footsteps coming. Put them up--we must go to
work cautiously, and break the matter to your parents by degrees."

It was the mother of the girl who entered; and she seemed faint and
tired. Well had the old woman called her a drudge, for such she was--a
poor patient household drudge, laboring for a hard, heartless, idle, and
cunning husband, and but too tenderly fond of the poor girl whose beauty
had been a snare to her.

She seemed somewhat surprised to see the old woman there; for they were
of different creeds, and those creeds made wide separation in the days I
speak of. Perhaps she was surprised and grieved to see the traces of
tears and agitation on her daughter's face; but of that she took no
notice; for there were doubts and fears at her heart which she dreaded
to confirm. The girl was more cheerful, however, than she had been for
the last week--not gay, not even calm; but yet there was a look of some
relief.

Often even after her mother's entrance, the tears would gather thick in
her eyes when she thought of the dead; but it was evident that hope had
risen up: that the future was not all darkness and terror. This was a
comfort to her; and she spoke and looked cheerfully. She had sold all
the thread of her and her daughter's spinning, and she had sold it well.
Part she hid in a corner to keep a pittance for bread from her husband's
eyes; part she reserved to give up to him for the purchase of drink: but
while she made all these little arrangements, she looked somewhat
anxiously at the old woman, from time to time, as if she fain would have
asked, "What brought you here?"

The crone was cautious, however, and knew well with whom she had to
deal. She talked in solemn and oracular tones, as if she had possessed
all the secrets of fate, but she told nothing, and when she went away