Part 27 (2/2)

She stopped--and looked with her blazing and wonderful eyes at her companion--her lips parted. Then she suddenly stooped and kissed the cold hand trying to withdraw itself from hers.

”Who was he, dear?”--she laid the hand caressingly against her cheek--”I'm good at secrets!”

Alice Puttenham wrenched herself free, and rose tottering to her feet.

”He is dead, Hester--and you mustn't speak of it to me--or any one--again.”

She leant against the mantelpiece trying to recover herself--but in vain.

”I'm rather faint,” she said at last, putting out a groping hand. ”No, don't come!--I'm all right--I'll go upstairs and rest. I got overtired this morning.”

And she went feebly toward the door.

Hester looked after her, panting and wounded. Aunt Alsie repel--refuse her!--Aunt Alsie!--who had always been her special possession and chattel. It had been taken for granted in the family, year after year, that if no one else was devoted to Hester, Aunt Alsie's devotion, at least, never failed. Hester's clothes were Miss Puttenham's special care; it was for Hester that she st.i.tched and embroidered. Hester was to inherit her jewels and her money. In all Hester's sc.r.a.pes it was Aunt Alice who stood by her, who had often carried her off bodily out of reach of the family anger, to the Lakes, to the sea--once even, to Italy.

And from her childhood Hester had coolly taken it all for granted, had never been specially grateful, or much more amenable to counsels from Aunt Alice than from anybody else. The slender, graceful woman, so gentle, plaintive and reserved, so easily tyrannized over, had never seemed to mean much to her. Yet now, as she stood looking at the door through which Miss Puttenham had disappeared, the girl was conscious of a profound and pa.s.sionate sense of grievance, and of something deeper, beneath it. The sensation that held her was new and unbearable.

Then in a moment her temperament turned pain into anger. She ran to the window and down the steps into the garden.

”If she had told me”--she said to herself, with the childish fury that mingled in her with older and maturer things--”I might have told _her_.

Now--I fend for myself!”

CHAPTER X

Meanwhile, in the room upstairs, Alice Puttenham lying with her face pressed against the back of the chair into which she had feebly dropped, heard Hester run down the steps, tried to call, or rise, and could not.

Since the death of Judith Sabin she had had little or no sleep, and much less food than usual, with--all the while--the pressure of a vague corrosive terror on nerve and brain. The shock of that miniature in Hester's hands had just turned the scale; endurance had given way.

The quick footsteps receded. Yet she could do nothing to arrest them. Her mind floated in darkness.

Presently out of the darkness emerged a sound, a touch--a warm hand on hers.

”Dear--dear Miss Puttenham!”

”Yes.”

Her voice seemed to herself a sigh--the faintest--from a great distance.

”The servants said you were here. Ellen came up to knock, and you did not hear. I was afraid you were ill--so I came in--you'll forgive me.”

”Thank you.”

Silence for a while. Mary brought cold water, chafed her friend's hands, and rendered all the services that women in such straits know how to lavish on a sufferer. Gradually Alice mastered herself, but more than a broken word or two still seemed beyond her, and Mary waited in patience.

She was well aware that some trouble of a nature unknown to her had been weighing on Miss Puttenham for a week or more; and she realized too, instinctively, that she would get no light upon it.

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