We were very sober. The little children chattered on; it meant nothing to them, this breath from such a far past. But to hearts old enough to comprehend, there was something infinitely sad and suggestive in it. I already felt, though I had not read one word of her writing, that I loved the woman called Esther; as for my uncle, his very face was becoming changed by the thought of her, and the mystery about the appearance of the letters. He began to be annoyed also; for the servants were growing suspicious, and unwilling to go into the cellar. Mary the cook declared that on the morning when she found this last letter, something white brushed by her at the foot of the stairs; and Robert said that he had for a long time heard strange sounds from that staircase late at night.
Just after this, my aunt went away for a visit; and several days passed without any further discoveries on the stairs. My uncle and I spent long hours in talking over the mystery, and he urged me to read, or to let him read to me, the two letters he had.
"Pet," he said, "I will tell you something. One reason they move me so is, that they are strangely like words written by a woman whom I knew thirty years ago. I did not believe two such women had been on the earth."
I kissed his hand when he said this; yet a strange unwillingness to read Esther's letters withheld me. I felt that he had right, and I had not.
But the end of the mystery was near. It was revealed, as it ought to have been, to my uncle himself.
One night I was wakened out of my first sleep by a very cautious tap at my door, and my uncle's voice, saying,--
"Nell--Nell, are you awake?"
I sprang to the door instantly.
"O uncle, are you ill?" (My aunt had not yet returned.)
"No, pet. But I want you down-stairs. Dress yourself and come down into the library."