"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."
"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."