“You have found her good as well as useful?”
“Always. She has seemed more like a friend than a housekeeper. Why do you ask? Why are we discussing her when there are so many other things we ought to talk about?”
“Because this nurse of Edgar concerns us more than any one else in the world to-day. Because through her we nearly came to grief and now through her we are to see the light again. Will you try to understand me? Without further words, understand me?”
I could see the knowledge coming, growing, flaming in her face.
“Wealthy!” she cried. “Wealthy! Not any one nearer and dearer! I could never bring myself to believe that it was. But not to know! I could not have borne it much longer.”
And I had to sit there, with her dear hand so near and not touch it. To explain, counsel and console, with that old adjuration from lips whose dictates still remained authoritative over me, not to pass the line from cousinship to lover till he had taken off the ban or was dead. He was dead, but the ban had not yet been removed, for there were some things I must be sure of before love could triumph; one of which I was resolved to settle before I left Orpha’s presence.
So when we had said all there was to say of the day’s tragedy and what was to be expected from it, I spoke to her of the odd little key which had opened the way to the hidden stairway and asked her if she had it about her as I greatly desired to see it again.
“I am wearing it for a little while,” she answered and drawing the chain from her neck she laid both that and the key in my hand.
I studied the latter closely before putting the inquiry:
“Is this the key you found in the earth of the flower-pot, Orpha?”