id I try to keep you out, miss?"

"When I came home from school, to nurse my aunt. Ah, you remember now!
Is it true--I ask you here, where your old mistress died--is it true
that my aunt deceived me about my father's death? And that you knew it?"

There was dead silence. Mrs. Ellmother trembled horribly--her lips
dropped apart--her eyes wandered round the room with a stare of idiotic
terror. "Is it her ghost tells you that?" she whispered. "Where is her
ghost? The room whirls round and round, miss--and the air sings in my
ears."

Emily sprang forward to support her. She staggered to a chair, and
lifted her great bony hands in wild entreaty. "Don't frighten me," she
said. "Stand back."

Emily obeyed her. She dashed the cold sweat off her forehead. "You were
talking about your father's death just now," she burst out, in desperate
defiant tones. "Well! we know it and we are sorry for it--your father
died suddenly."

"My father died murdered in the inn at Zeeland! All the long way to
London, I have tried to doubt it. Oh, me, I know it now!"

Answering in those words, she looked toward the bed. Harrowing
remembrances of her aunt's delirious self-betrayal made the room
unendurable to her. She ran out. The parlor door was open. Entering the
room, she passed by a portrait of her father, which her aunt had hung
on the wall over the fireplace. She threw herself on the sofa and burst
into a passionate fit of crying. "Oh, my father--my dear, gentle, loving
father; my first, best, truest friend--murdered! murdered! Oh, God,
where was your justice, where was your mercy, when he died that dreadful
death?"

A hand was laid on her shoulder; a voice said to her, "Hush, my child!
God knows best."

Emily looked up, and saw that Mrs. Ellmother had followed her. "You
poor old soul," she said, suddenly remembering; "I frightened you in the
other room."

"I have got over it, my dear. I am old; and I have lived a hard life.
A hard life schools a person. I make no complaints." She stopped, and
began to shudder again. "Will you believe me if I tell you something?"
she asked. "I warned my self-willed mistress. Standing by your father's
coffin, I warned her. Hide the truth as you may (I said), a time will
come when our child will know what you are keeping from her now. One or
both of us may live to see it. I am the one who has lived; no refuge
in the grave for me. I want to hear about it--there's no fear of
frightening or hurting me now