“Going on softly, scarcely breathing, I reached the door and looked in. I cannot tell you what I felt at the sight which met my eyes. I could not have moved or spoken if I had tried, so great was the terror which seized me.
“There was a lighted lamp on the window seat, and a tall woman was busily taking books from the shelves and piling them in the middle of the room. She was dressed in a long white wrapper, and her hair streamed nearly to her feet. Her face was towards me. I saw that her eyes were black and large, and there was a wild expression in them.
“Presently she ceased in her work, and, lighting a taper, put it to the books. Then, the spell was broken! I don’t know how I reached aunt Marion’s room, but I remember shrieking at the top of my voice and fleeing as if wings were on my feet. Such agony of fear I am sure I never can feel again. I burst into the room, I threw myself trembling, panting, cowering, on the bed—only able to sob out, ‘In the library—oh! a woman—she is burning the books.’
“That is all I remembered of what took place then, but in the morning I saw the woman again, and spoke to her, even touched her hand gently, and kissed her cheek, though a good many of my favorite books lay blackened and charred on the floor of the library. The long hair was bound up, and the wild, black eyes were very sad now,—oh, so sad, so wistful, so full of dumb questioning, like those of some beautiful, caged animal; and she sat with her hands clasped, looking down, very pale, grief-worn and quiet.
“But after a while they took her away again. She was my aunt, my mother’s sister, and had been insane for years. She had been taken to an asylum, but escaped occasionally from her keepers and returned to her old home. They tried to keep her there, but she was better away from her friends, and though years had passed they had never given up the hope of her recovery.
CHAPTER XII.
“When morning came, the fears and troubles of the night passed away like a mist, and I felt less inclined to tell aunt Marion my short-comings. In the excitement about the crazy girl, I forgot it almost entirely, and indeed she was so busy that I had no opportunity of speaking to her alone. So, when the bustle was over and my whisperings of conscience returned, I made that an excuse to myself—and tried to dismiss the whole matter from my mind.