Miss Emmy could not at once take in the details; her natural supposition was that her sister was ill or had fainted and slipped from the near-by arm-chair. Going to her she touched her on the shoulder, and in a low tone gave the doctor's message about the nurse and the sufficiency of Caleb for the night.
Suddenly Miss Felton turned, but without moving from her kneeling posture, and her sister started back, amazed at the entire change in her face. Haggard and worn, furrowed under the eyes and pinched at the nostrils, it was a woman of seventy-five, not sixty-four, that looked up, while the carefully braided hair, always so exact a coronal to the unbending head, was loosened in a gray, dishevelled mass. Again Miss Emmy tried to explain the doctor's words. Pulling herself to her feet with difficulty, Miss Felton clutched her sister by one shoulder, almost screaming in her ear.
"I will not go! I will not have a nurse! Caleb will stay with us; Caleb will be sufficient." Then as Miss Emmy did not move or seem to understand, she shook her arm.
"I am going to care for him now, because I love him, have always loved him, and you, or else your shadow, have always stood between. If he could have stepped out of it for a month, a week, he would have known. I thought once that you too loved him and you were my frail little sister, my charge, and so I repulsed him, suppressed my nature, and kept back. But you, you called him 'Willy' and played kitten and knitting ball with him until you tired, until it was too late. Now he will never know; but if he lives, and I can make him comfortable, he may perhaps realize the comfort, and through it that I love him. Now go—and leave us together at last! And if the people talk, tell them that Miss Felton does not care!"
Shaken, nay, almost shattered, Miss Emmy dragged herself from the room, clinging from chair to table like a child who creeps. Of all the possibilities of life, this that had happened seemed the most impossible. Elizabeth, the emotionless woman of perfect balance and judgment! Like a condemned criminal but half conscious of what he is accused, she groped her way along the hall. She must speak to some one, it seemed, or lose her mind.
Poppea had sent a message by Nora that she must be called if needed. Surely her need was great, so she opened the girl's door and listened before entering.
"I am not asleep," said Poppea from the white draped bed, and raising herself on her elbow, she lit the night lamp on the bed stand.
"Is he—is Mr. Esterbrook any worse? Is he very sick?"
"Yes, but being sick is not the worst," and Miss Emmy told Poppea briefly what her sister now seemed to glory in, willing that the whole world should know.
Clasping her arms about the fragile creature, scarcely more than a bundle of ribbon and lace, Poppea held her close, crying, "Poor Aunty, dear Aunt Emmy, you are not blamable, neither did you know."