"I'm ill- I'm faint- I want air," she
answered, speaking thickly and confusedly.
" Open the garden-door and let me out."

The man obeyed, but doubtfully, as if
he thought her unfit to be trusted by
herself.

"She gets stranger than ever in her
ways," he said, when he rejoined his
fellow-servant, after Sarah had hurried past him
into the open air. " Now my mistress is dead,
she will have to find another place, I suppose,
I, for one, shan't break my heart when she's
gone. Shall you? "

The cool, sweet air in the garden blowing
freshly over Sarah's face, seemed to calm the
violence of her agitation. She turned down
a side walk which led to a terrace and
overlooked the church of the neighbouring
village. The daylight out of doors was clear
already. The misty auburn light that goes
before sunrise, was flowing up, peaceful and
lovely, behind a line of black-brown moorland,
over all the eastern sky. The old
church, with the hedge of myrtle and fuschia
growing round the little cemetery at the side
of it in all the luxuriance which is only seen
in Cornwall, was clearing and brightening to
view, almost as fast as the morning firmament
itself.  Sarah leaned her arms heavily on
the back of a garden-seat, and turned her
face towards the church.  Her eyes
wandered from the building itself to the
cemetery by its side- rested there- and
watched the light growing warmer and
warmer over the lonesome refuge where the
dead lay at rest.

"O, my heart! my heart! " she said.
"What must it be made of not to break?"

She remained for some time leaning on the
seat, looking sadly towards the churchyard, and
pondering over the words which she had
heard Captain Treverton say to the child.
They seemed to connect themselves, as
everything else now appeared to connect itself in
her mind, with the letter that had been written
on Mrs. Treverton's death-bed. She drew it
from her bosom once more, and crushed it
up angrily in her fingers.

"Still in my hands! still not seen by any
eyes but mine! " she said, looking down at the
crumpled pages. " Is it all my fault? If
she was alive now- if she had seen what I
saw, if she had heard what I heard- could
she expect me to give him the letter?"

Her mind was apparently steadied by the
reflection which her last words expressed.
She moved away thoughtfully from the
garden-seat, crossed the terrace, descended some
wooden steps, and followed a shrubbery path,
which led round by a winding track from
the east to the north side of the house.

This part of the building had been
uninhabited and neglected for more than half
a century past.  In the time of Captain
Treverton's father the whole range of the
north rooms had been stripped of their finest
pictures and their most valuable furniture, to
assist in re-decorating the west rooms, which
now formed the only inhabited part of the
house, and which were amply sufficient for
the accommodation of the family and of any
visitors who came to stay with them.  The
mansion had been originally built in the form
of a square, and had been strongly fortified.
Of the many defences of the place, but one
now remained- a heavy, low tower (from
which and from the village near, the house
derived its name of Porthgenna Tower),
standing at the southern extremity of the
west front.  The south side itself consisted
of stables and out-houses, with a ruinous
wall in front of them, which, running back,
eastward, at right angles, joined the north
side, and so completed the square which the
whole outline of the building represented.
The outside view of the range of north rooms
from the weedy, deserted garden, below,
showed plainly enough that many years had
passed since any human creature had
inhabited them.  The window-panes were broken
in some places, and covered thickly with dirt
and dust in others.  Here, the shuttered were
closed- there, they were only half opened.
The untrained ivy, the rank vegetation growing
in fissures of the stone-work, the festoons
of spiders' webs, the rubbish of wood, bricks,
plaster, broken glass, rags, and strips of soiled
cloth, which lay beneath the windows, all
told the same tale of neglect.  Shadowed by
its position, this ruinous side of the house
had a dark, cold, wintry aspect, even on the
sunny August morning, when Sarah Leeson
strayed into the deserted northern garden.
Lost in the labyrinth of her own thoughts,
she moved slowly past flower-beds, long
since rooted up, and along gravel-walks
overgrown by weeds; her eyes wandering
mechanically over the prospect, her feet
mechanically carrying her on wherever there was
a trace of a footpath, lead where it might.

The shock which the words spoken by her
master in the nursery had communicated to
her mind, had set her whole nature, so to
speak, at bay, and had roused in her, at last,
the moral courage to arm herself with a final
and a desperate resolution. Wandering more
and more slowly along the pathways of the
forsaken garden, as the course of her ideas
withdrew her more and more completely from
all outward things, she stopped insensibly on
an open patch of ground, which had once
been a well-kept lawn, and which still
commanded a full view of the long range of
uninhabited north rooms.

"What binds me to give the letter to my
master, at all? " she thought to herself,
smoothing out the crumpled paper dreamily
in the palm of her hand. "My mistress died
without making me swear to do that. Can
she visit it on me from the other world, if I
I keep the promises I swore to observe, and do
no more? May I not risk the worst that can
happen, so long as I hold religiously to all
that I undertook to do on my oath?"