You remember old Aunt Betsy Taylor, Jim's black mammy. When I was very
young she was still living on the place, and was to me a curiosity, the
last of her race, I was told. I did not know what this meant, but it
gave her words great weight. Once she pictured hell for me, the roaring
furnace, the writhing of the damned, and no reason and no reading has
ever served to clear my mind of her awful painting. With her as the
advocate I could hear the groans of lost souls; and in my childish way I
believed that the old woman was inspired to spread the terrors of
perdition; nor has education and the little I have seen of society,
wholly changed this belief. So when Mr. Pennington swore to me that if I
refused to marry him he would die blaspheming the name of God, my
judgment tottered and fell. I sit here now, looking at the bed whereon
he died. You saw him breathe his last, saw his smile of peace and hope.
That smile was my reward. For it I had wrung the heart of my father and
wiped my feet upon his pride. But I had sent a soul above. I have set
myself to the task of perfect frankness, and I must tell you that in my
heart there was not the semblance of love for him, love as you know it;
there was only pity and I can say that pity is not akin to love. Yes. I
sold myself, not as many a woman has, not as I would have been praised
and flattered for doing--not for money, but to save a soul. This is
written at night, with a still clock above me, the hands recording the
hour and the minute of his death, and the light of the sun may fade my
words and make them ghastly, but I am revealing, to my mother, my inner
self."

Mrs. Cranceford paused to wipe her eyes, and the Major, who had been
walking up and down the room, now stood looking through the window at
the sweep of yellow river, far away.

"But does she say when she is coming home?" he asked without turning his
head. "Read on, please."

The sheets were disarranged and it was some time before she obeyed.
"Read on, please," he repeated, and he moved from the window and stood
with his hands resting on the back of a chair. Mrs. Cranceford read on:

"There is one misfortune of mine that has always been apparent to you
and that is my painful sensitiveness. It was, however, not looked upon
as a misfortune, but rather as a fault which at will I might correct,
but I could no more have obviated it than I could have changed my entire
nature. When father charged me with ingratitude I realize