"Oh, Aunt, I am so glad you have come down! I was so lonely and so wretched!" broke out Emily, the moment she felt the touch and saw the face.
"I have been down some time, sitting in the front parlor by the window, and trying to make music out of that very-badly-cracked hand-organ that was playing on the other side of the way," said the widow, taking her seat by the young girl's side. Perhaps five-and-forty years had passed over the widowed younger sister of Judge Owen, who made her home in a quiet upper chamber of his house. But they had not much thinned her tall and magnificent form, or entirely destroyed, though they had completely subdued, the quiet beauty of her face, which must once have been strikingly like that of her niece. She had been in youth the underling of her family, as her elder brother had been the tyrant; and it was perhaps a fitting sequel, that at this period of her life she should have become, to some small extent, a pensioner on his bounty, as well as a peacemaker in his household.
"You have been in the front parlor some time?" echoed her niece, surprised. "Then you must have heard—"
"I heard quite enough," was the answer, as Aunt Martha possessed herself of both the young girl's hands, and finally drew down the nut-brown head so that it rested upon her bosom. "I heard a few of your words—enough to tell me what are your feelings toward the man whom they wish to make your husband. I heard your father's fierce resolution, and I made my own."
"And what was that?" asked the young girl, rising from her recumbent position, and showing something of the surprise she felt at hearing her gentle and pliant aunt speak of forming resolutions. She had cause to be more surprised in a moment.
"What was my resolution?" echoed Aunt Martha. "A strange one, perhaps, but one quite as immovable as my big brother's!"
"Yes, yes—tell me, Aunt, dear Aunt!" pleaded Emily, feeling that there was some shadow of hope in such words from such a source.
"My resolution?" said the placid woman, placid now no longer, but starting to her feet, speaking with rapid energy, and seeming, for the moment, half a foot taller than usual—"My resolution is that you shall never marry the man whom I have heard you say that you loathe and detest—not if sacrificing myself can save you—not if I can prevent the wrong, by even taking his life!"
"Aunt! Aunt I what are you saying!" broke out the young girl, surprised, and even horrified. "Do not say so, Aunt, for heaven's sake! I do dislike Col. Bancker; I cannot marry him without misery; but his life! You do not know what words you use."
"Do I not?" said the aunt, and there was a bitterness in her tone which her niece had never before heard there, and which perhaps no one else had heard there for many a long year. "Do I not? His life—pshaw! what is his life, or the life of any man, compared to some other lives that are sacrificed without punishment or even the knowledge of any crime being committed!"