"Norma!" she said, quickly. "I want Chris!"
"Right here, Aunt Marianna!" Norma answered, soothingly. And Chris was indeed leaning over the bed almost before she finished speaking.
"I want to talk to you and Chris," the old lady said, contentedly closing her eyes. "Everybody else out!" she whispered.
The room was immediately cleared. "It can't hurt her now!" Doctor Murray looked rather than said to Norma as he passed her. Chris watched the closing doors, sat beside the bed's head with one arm half-supporting his mother-in-law's pillows.
"We're all alone, Aunt Marianna," he said. "Leslie and Annie will be here in the morning, and Alice told me to tell you that she hoped——"
"Chris," the sick woman interrupted, gazing at him with an intense and painful stare, "this child here—Norma! I—I must straighten it all out now, Chris. Kate knows. Kate has all the papers—letters—Louison's letters! Ask Kate——"
She shut her eyes. Norma and Chris looked at one another in bewilderment. There was a long silence.
"So now you know!" Mrs. Melrose said, presently, returning to full consciousness as naturally as she had before. "I told you, didn't I?" she asked, faintly anxious.
"Don't bother now, Aunt Marianna," the girl begged in distress. "To-morrow——"
"Louison," Mrs. Melrose said, "was Annie's French maid—very superior girl!"