"Oh, Chris," she said, with a sort of wail. "If I don't know more!"
Her husband's slow colour rose.
"How could you know more?" he asked, bewilderedly.
Alice was unhappily silent.
"Chris, if I tell you what I'm afraid of—what I fear," she said, presently, after anxious thought, "will you promise me never, never to speak of it—never even to think of it!—if it—if it proves not to be true?"
"I don't have to tell you that, Alice," he said.
"No, of course you don't—of course you don't!" she echoed with a nervous laugh. "I'll tell you what I think, Chris—what has been almost driving me mad—and you can probably tell me a thousand reasons why it can't be so! You see, I've never understood Mama's feverish distress these last weeks. She's been to see me, she's done what had to be done about Leslie's engagement, but she's not herself—you can see that! Yesterday she began to cry, almost for nothing, and when I happened to mention—or rather when I mentioned very deliberately—that Miss Sheridan was coming here, she almost shrieked. Well, I didn't know what to make of it, and even then I rather wondered——
"Even then," Alice began again, after a painful pause, and with her own voice rising uncontrollably, "I suspected something. But not this! Oh, Chris, if I'm wrong about this, I shall be on my knees for gratitude for the rest of my life; I would die, I would die to have it just—just my wretched imagination!—A thing like this—to us—the Melroses—who have always been so straight—so respected!"
"Now, Alice—now, Alice!"
"Yes, I know!" she said, quickly. "I know!" And for a moment she lay back quietly, stroking his hand. "Chris," she resumed, composedly, after a moment, "you know the tragedy of Annie's life?"