"This size, with a white cover, edged with gold. The lock was clasped with a trinket like this on my watch, only larger, and with red sparks set in it."
"Like dis, with little red stuns—the cover white, and shut wid a thing like this. Yes, missus, Master James had a book jus' like de one you mean in his room, de berry morning afore he done and went off!"
"Go," said Mabel, shivering, "go search for it!"
The woman shuffled herself out of the room; directly she returned, with several leaves of crumpled writing in one hand, and some small object clenched in the other.
"The book's done gone, missus; but here's something dat I found on his table, 'sides dis what I sifted out of de ashes."
She handed Mabel some crumpled pages of her journal, evidently torn from the book; the half of a broken heart, dulled with fire, and the corner of what had once been a vellum cover, burned almost away, but with a gleam of the tarnished gold and white upon the edge.
"Sakes alive, how white you is, missus!" exclaimed the woman, and a disagreeable gleam broke from under her half-shut eyelids, as she saw Mabel stagger and sink faintly back into her chair, grasping the fragments of her journal as she fell.
"No, no!" she gasped, repulsing the mulatto with her hand: "I am not white—I am not ill. These—these—you found them in Mr. James Harrington's room!"
"Them papers was on his table wid his cigar-case, an' pipe, an' dem tings. De gol' heart, and dat oder, dis chile fished out o' de grate, for de Lord just as 'tis dare."
"Go!" commanded Mabel, hoarsely. "I know where the book went to; that is enough!"