"A great many years ago, when this house was new, she lived here with her father and an older sister and a younger brother. They were all very happy together, and the brother was the pride and joy and hope of the whole family. But one time he had a violent disagreement with his father (she didn't tell me what it was about), and she and her sister took sides with her father against the brother. After that they had the same disagreement a great many times, and at last one so bad that the young man declared he wouldn't endure it any longer, and threatened to leave home.
"They didn't believe he was really serious about it, but the next morning his room was vacant, and a note pinned to his pillow said he had gone away never to return. They felt awfully about it, of course, but that wasn't the worst. About two weeks later they received word that he had taken passage on a steamer for Europe, and after only a day or so out he was discovered to be missing, so he must have fallen overboard, or been washed over and drowned. Wasn't that frightful?"
Janet and Marcia looked horrified. "What did she do then?" they whispered.
"That's the most dreadful part," went on Cecily. "The shock was so great that the father died a week afterward—the doctors said virtually of a broken heart. So there were two gone, and within a month. The two that were left, Miss Benedict and her sister, shut themselves up and went into mourning and saw almost no one. For a while they were paralyzed with grief. And then, little by little, very gradually, they began to realize that people were talking about them—saying dreadful things. One of the few friends they did see let drop little hints of the gossip that was going on outside. People were saying that they were to blame for it all, and that they probably weren't so sorry as they pretended to be, for now they could enjoy all the money themselves. Can you imagine anything so horrid?"
"Oh, but that's nonsense!" interrupted Janet impatiently. "How could any one say it was their fault?"
"Well, you know how people talk," replied Cecily. "They meant that by nagging and quarreling they had driven the brother away on purpose, and then made it so unpleasant for the father that he couldn't stand it any longer either. It wasn't said in so many words, but just little hints and allusions and shrugging shoulders and all that sort of thing. But the meaning was there underneath it all, as plain as anything.
"Their grief and the horrid talk about them made them feel so very badly that they determined to live in such a way that no one could accuse them of enjoying an ill-gotten fortune. So they shut up the house,—at least a large part of it,—and dismissed all their servants, and did most of the work themselves. After a while the few friends they had began to drop away, one by one, till no one came to see them any more.
"And then one day, two or three years later, the older sister had a paralytic stroke and lost her memory. She's been shut up in that room ever since, and Miss Benedict takes care of her. She can sit up in a chair and knit, and she likes to have a chess-board on her lap, and move the pieces around, because she once loved to play the game with her younger brother. But she can't remember anything—not even who she is herself, and nothing about what has happened. Miss Benedict feels terribly about her, especially about her not remembering anything, and she says that is why she didn't tell me about her at first. It seemed so terrible.