"Swear, child," she went on, in the same frenzied manner; "swear to your helpless mother that you will not look at them; swear that you will burn them here before my eyes—now. Swear!"
"Mamma!" Charlotte protested, with a fleeting idea of possible future consequences,—again, the inward prompting,—"Mamma, have I the right? What may happen if I obey you? Oh, mother dear, wait! Wait until you are calmer; you are overwrought now; you do not know what you are exacting. Dear—dear mamma, I shall not look at them; but let me place—"
But this earnest though gentle opposition so fanned the fire of excitement that Charlotte instantly regretted her words.
"Child, obey me!" the mother commanded, with almost savage fierceness. "Hesitate one instant longer, and I shall hurl my worthless body to the floor and drag myself to the fireplace with my two hands." Then, in a quick transition, "O, God!—Charlotte!—my daughter!" she moaned; "to think I am helpless in this awful hour!"
"Hush, hush, dear; I will do as you say, instantly. I will hold them down to the coals until nothing remains but ashes. See—"
But stay your hand, Charlotte! What if you now hold the only existing evidence—the only barrier that stands between dear ones and disaster! Is it some premonition of the truth that causes you to hesitate?
Alas, the papers flutter to the coals!
"See, mamma; they burn."
When the last flame had expired, when nothing but flakes of black ashes were arising on the draught and vanishing up the chimney, Mrs. Fairchild began to laugh—violently, dreadfully.
It was a night of horror for Charlotte. Quite ignorant of the cause of her mother's fearful condition, she was obliged to tend the frail body through alternating fits of hysterical laughter and weeping, and to hearken to wild, disordered monologues, in which the names of Peyton Westbrook, William Slade, and her own dead father were repeated over and over again, incoherently, in a grotesque, unintelligible association.