“I will see that a gate is left unfastened and that everything is ready.”
“Must I go into that dreadful building?”
“What, into the hospital? not at all. She is in the dead-house outside.”
Mrs. Judson did not speak, but her face turned coldly white. Jane looked at her with a sense of superiority. She was far above such weakness as that. Neither the living nor the dead could frighten her much. That half hour had lifted her into a feeling almost of companionship with the woman who had swept by her so haughtily in the hall.
“Don’t take on, ma’am,” she said; “if I was you now, it would not be ten minutes before I should be in bed and sound asleep; but there is a difference between people and people; so if you like sitting up in a chair, why, chair it is, say I.”
But Mrs. Judson was not sitting in her chair just then. Some new thought had seized upon her, and she was walking up and down the room in great agitation. When Jane Kelly was about to withdraw, she called her back.
“If this should prove true,” she said, “I shall want help, and have no one to confide in. Will you be faithful and silent if I double the sum you have just received?”
“True as steel, and silent as the grave. Try me.”
“If it should prove true, I will. You may go now.”
As Jane went down-stairs, Ellen was waiting in the hall, and would have stopped her for a little free gossip, but Jane passed her, only stopping to say,—