"I hold myself," cried Emma. "You cannot release me,--except," she added, with gentle intimation, "by releasing yourself."

"I cannot release myself," moaned Hermione. "If we all perish I cannot release myself. _I_ am a prisoner to this house, but you----"

"We are sister prisoners," interpolated Emma, softly. Then with a sudden smile, "I was in hopes that he who led you to break one resolution might induce you to break another."

But Hermione, flushing with something of her old fire, cried out warmly: "In going out of the house I broke a promise made to myself, but in leaving the grounds I should--oh, I cannot tell you what I should do; not even you know the full bitterness of my life! It is a secret, locked in this shrinking, tortured heart, which it almost breaks, but does not quite, or I should not linger in this dreadful world to be a cause of woe to those I cherish most."

"But Hermione, Hermione----"

"You think you know what has set a seal on my lips, the gloom on my brow, the death in my heart; but you do not, Emma. You know much, but not the fatal grief, the irrepressible misery. But you shall know, and know soon. I have promised to write out the whole history of my life for Mr. Etheridge, and when he has read it you shall read it too. Perhaps when you learn what the real horror of this house has been, you may appreciate the force of will-power which it has taken for me to remain in it."

Emma, who had never suspected anything in the past beyond what she herself knew, grew white with fresh dismay. But Hermione, seeing it, kissed her, and, speaking more lightly, said: "You kept back one vital secret from me in consideration of what you thought the limit of my endurance. I have done the same for you under the same consideration.

Now we will equalize matters, and perhaps--who knows?--happier days may come, if Mr. Etheridge is not too much startled by the revelations I have to make him, and if Dr. Sellick--do not shrink, Emma--learns some magnanimity from his friend and will accept the explanations I shall think it my duty to offer him."

But at this suggestion, so unlike any that had ever come from Hermione's lips before, the younger sister first stared, and then flung her arms around the speaker, with cries of soft deprecation and shame.

"You shall not," she murmured. "Not if I lose him shall he ever know why that cruel letter was written. It is enough--it shall be enough--that he was dismissed _then_. If he loves me he will try his fate again. But I do not think he does love me, and it would be better for him that he did not. Would _he_ ever marry a woman who, not even at his entreaty, could be induced to cross the limits of her home?"

"Mr. Etheridge should not do it either; but he is so generous--perhaps so hopeful! He may not be as much so when he has read what I have to write."

"I think he will," said Emma, and then paused, remembering that she did not know all that her sister had to relate.

"He would be a man in a thousand then," whispered the once haughty Hermione. "A man to worship, to sacrifice all and everything to, that it was in one's power to sacrifice."

"He will do what is right," quoth Emma.

Hermione sighed. Was she afraid of the right?

Meantime, in the poplar-walk below, another talk was being held, which, if these young girls could have heard it, might have made them feel even more bitterly than before, what heavy clouds lay upon any prospect of joy which they might secretly cherish. Doris, who was a woman of many thoughts, and who just now found full scope for all her ideas in the unhappy position of her two dear young ladies, had gone into the open air to pick currants and commune with herself as to what more could be done to bring them into a proper recognition of their folly in clinging to a habit or determination which seemed likely to plunge them into such difficulties.

The currant bushes were at the farther end of the garden near the termination of the poplar-walk, and when, in one of the pauses of her picking, she chanced to look up, she saw advancing towards her down that walk the thin, wiry figure of the old man who had taken luncheon with the young ladies, and whom they called, in very peculiar tones, she thought, Mr. Huckins. He was looking from right to left as he came, and his air was one of contemplation or that of a person who was taking in the beauties of a scene new to him and not wholly unpleasant.

When he reached the spot where Doris stood eying him with some curiosity and not a little distrust, he paused, looked about him, and perceiving her, affected some surprise, and stepped briskly to where she was.

"Picking currants?" he observed. "Let me help you. I used to do such things when a boy."

Astonished, and not a little gratified at what she chose to consider his condescension, Doris smiled. It was a rare thing now for a man to be seen in this lonesome old place, and such companionship was not altogether disagreeable to Mistress Doris.

Huckins rubbed his hands together in satisfaction at this smile, and sidled up to the simpering spinster with a very propitiatory air.

"How nice this all is," he remarked. "So rural, so peaceful, and so pleasant. I come from a place where there is no fruit, nor flowers, nor young ladies. You must be happy here." And he gave her a look which she thought very insinuating.

"Oh, I am happy enough," she conceded, "because I am bound to be happy wherever the young ladies are. But I could wish that things were different too." And she thought herself very discreet that she had not spoken more clearly.

"Things?" he repeated softly.

"Yes, my young ladies have odd ideas; I thought you knew."

He drew nearer to her side, very much nearer, and dropped the currants he had plucked gently into her pail.

"I know they have a fixed antipathy to going out, but they will get over that."

"Do you think so?" she asked eagerly.

"Don't _you_?" he queried, with an innocent look of surprise. He was improving in his dissimulation, or else he succeeded better with those of whom he had no fear.

"I don't know what to think. Are you an old friend of theirs?" she inquired. "You must be, to lunch with them."

"I never saw them before to-day," he returned, "yet I am an old friend.

Reason that out," he leered.

"You like to puzzle folks," she observed, picking very busily but smiling all the while. "Do you give answers with your puzzles?"

"Not to such sharp wits as yours. But how beautiful Miss Cavanagh is.

Has she always had that scar?"

"Ever since I knew her."

"Pity she should have such a blemish. You like her, don't you, very much?"

"I love her."

"And her sister--such a sweet girl!"

"I love them both."

"That is right. I should be sorry to have any one about them who did not love them. _I_ love them, or soon shall, very much."

"Are you," Doris inquired, with great inquisitiveness, "going to remain in Marston any time?"

"I cannot say," sighed the old man; "I should like to. I should be very happy here, but I am afraid the young ladies do not like me well enough."

Doris had cherished some such idea herself an hour ago, and had not wondered at it then, but now her feelings seemed changed.

"Was it to see them you came to Marston?" said she.

"Merely to see them," he replied.

She was puzzled, but more eager than puzzled, so anxious was she to find some one who could control their eccentricities.

"They will treat you politely," she a.s.sured him. "They are peculiar girls, but they are always polite."

"I am afraid I shall not be satisfied with politeness," he insinuated.

"I want them to love me, to confide in me. I want to be their friend in fact as I have so long been in fancy."

"You are some relative of theirs," she now a.s.serted, "or you knew their father well or their mother."

"I wouldn't say no," he replied,--but to which of these three intimations, he evidently did not think it worth while to say.