"I can not marry Mrs. Deering's nephew," she sobbed, under her breath. "It would be easier for me to die. But what shall I do to raise the money for which they hold my poor mother a veritable slave!"
She clasped her hands in piteous entreaty; but the soft, radiant moon and the golden stars to which she raised her eyes so appealingly could find no answer for her.
As the train slowed up at the station, she pulled her veil down closely. She hurriedly alighted and sped like a storm-driven swallow up the village street and along the high-road, until, almost out of breath, she reached the Deerings' mansion. She stood transfixed for a moment at the gate.
What was there about the place that caused such a shudder to creep over her? What did the awful presentiment, as of coming evil, mean that took possession of her body and soul?
[CHAPTER X.]
How weird the place looked, how gaunt and bare the great oak-trees looked, looming up darkly against the moonlit sky! The dead leaves rustled across her path as she crept around to the rear door.
She looked up at her mother's window, and another great chill crept over her. All was dark there. It had always been her mother's custom to place her lamp on the broad window-sill at night. Many a time it had been her beacon-light in cutting across lots from the station on evenings when she had been detained by her work. How strange it was that the light was not in the window to-night!
"Mother is not expecting me to-night," she said to herself, "that is the reason it is not there."
But ah, how she missed it! How her heart had yearned to behold it, with a yearning so great that it had been the most intense pain. She lifted the latch and entered tremblingly, hesitatingly. It had been over two months since her mother had heard from her. How had her patient, suffering mother lived through it?