"I will try, Rosamond, —but my only
thoughts of the future, for years and years
past, have been thoughts of meeting you in
heaven. If my sins are forgiven, how shall
we meet there? Shall you be like my little
child to me,—the child I never saw again
after she was five years old? I wonder if the
mercy of God will recompense me for our
long separation on earth? I wonder if you
will first appear to me in the happy world,
with your child's face, and be what you
should have been to me on earth, my
little angel that I can carry in my arms?
If we pray in heaven, shall I teach
you your prayers there, as some comfort
to me for never having taught them to you
here?"

She paused, smiled sadly, and, closing
her eyes, gave herself in silence to the dream
-thoughts that were still floating in her mind.
Thinking that she might sink to rest again
if she was left undisturbed, Rosamond neither
moved nor spoke. After watching the peaceful
face for some time, she became conscious
that the light was fading on it slowly.
As that conviction impressed itself on
her, she looked round at the window once
more. The western clouds wore their quiet
twilight-colours already: the close of day
had come.

The moment she moved in the chair, she
felt her mother's hand on her shoulder.
When she turned again toward the bed, she
saw her mother's eyes open and looking
at her—looking at her, as she thought, with
a change in their expression, a change to
vacancy.

' Why do I talk of heaven? " she said,
turning her face suddenly towards the
darkening sky, and speaking in low, muttering
tones. " How do I know I am fit to go
there? And yet, Rosamond, I am not guilty
of breaking my oath to my mistress. You
can say for me that I never destroyed the
letter, and that I never took it away with
me when I left the house."

"It will be dark soon, mother. Let me
get up for one moment to light the candles."

Her hand crept softly upward, and clung
fast round Rosamond's neck.

"I never swore to give him the letter,"
she said. " There was no crime in the hiding
of it. You found it in a picture, Rosamond?'
They used to call it a picture of the Porthgenna
ghost. Nobody knew how old it was
or when it came into the house. My mistress
hated it, because the painted face had a
strange likeness to hers. She told me when
first I lived at Porthgenna, to take it down
from the wall and destroy it. I was afraid
to do that; so I hid it away, before ever you
were born, in the Myrtle Room. You found
the letter at the back of the picture,
Rosamond? And yet that was a likely place to
hide it in. Nobody had ever found the
picture. Why should anybody find the letter
that was hid in it?"

"Let me get a light, mother! I am sure
you would like to have a light!"

"No! no light now. Give the darkness
time to gather down there in the corner of
the room. Lift me up close to you, and let
me whisper."

The clinging arm tightened its grasp as
Rosamond raised her in the bed. The fading
light from the window fell full on her face,
and was reflected dimly in her vacant eyes.
"I am waiting for something, that comes at
dusk, before the candles are lit," she
whispered in low breathless tones. "Down
there! " And she pointed away to the
farthest corner of the room near the door.

"Mother! for God's sake, what is it! what
has changed you so?"

"That's right! say, ' Mother.' If she does
come, she can't stop when she hears you
call me ' Mother,' when she sees us together
at last, loving and knowing each other in
spite of her. Oh, my kind, tender, pitying
child! if you can only deliver me from her,
how long I may live yet!—how happy we
may both be!"

"Don't talk so! don't look so! Tell me
quietly—dear, dear mother,—tell me
quietly——"

"Hush! hush! I am going to tell you.
She threatened me on her death-bed, if I
thwarted her: she said she would come to
me from the other world. Rosamond! I have
thwarted her, and she has kept her promise
—all my life since, she has kept her promise!
Look! Down there!"

Her left arm was still clasped round
Rosamond's neck. She stretched her right arm
out towards the far corner of the room,
and shook her hand slowly at the empty
air.

"Look! " she said. " There she is as she
always comes to me, at the close of day,—
with the coarse, black dress on, that my
guilty hands made for her,—with the smile
that there was on her face when she asked me
if she looked like a servant. Mistress!
mistress! Oh, rest at last! the Secret is ours no
longer! Rest at last! my child is my own
again! Rest at last; and come between us
no more!"

She ceased, panting for breath; and laid
her hot, throbbing cheek against the cheek
of her daughter. " Call me ' Mother ' again!"
she whispered. " Say it loud; and send her
away from me for ever!"

Rosamond mastered the terror that shook
in every limb, and pronounced the word.

Her mother leaned forward a little, still
gasping heavily for breath, and looked with
straining eyes into the quiet twilight dimness
at the lower end of the room.

"Gone!!! " she cried suddenly, with a
scream of exultation. " Oh, merciful, merciful
God! gone at last!"

The next instant she sprang up on her
knees in the bed. For one awful moment