"You are so good to me," she said, "you and Mr. Arthur. How lonely the house seems without him."
"Yes," Frank replied, though in his heart he felt his brother's absence as a relief, for his presence was a constant reproach to him, and helped to keep alive the remorse which was always tormenting him.
The sight of Jerrie was a pain, but she held a nameless fascination for him, and he was constantly wondering what she would say and do when she knew, as he was morally sure she would sometime know what he had done. He was thinking of this now, and saying to himself, "She will not be as hard upon me as Arthur," as he lead her up the stairs and stopped at the door of Arthur's rooms.
"Would you like to go in?" he asked. "I have the keys," and he proceeded to unlock the door.
But Jerrie held back.
"No," she said, "it is like a grave. The ruling spirit is gone."
"But you forget Gretchen. She is here, and one of Arthur's last injunctions was that I should visit her every day, and tell her he was coming back. I have not seen her this morning. Come."
He was leading her now by the wrist through the front parlor, where the furniture in its white shrouds looked like ghosts, and the pictures were covered with tarleton. It was dark, too, in the Gretchen room, but Frank threw open the blinds and let in a flood of light upon the picture, before which Jerrie stood with feelings such as she had never experienced before, when she looked upon that lovely face.
A new idea had taken possession of Jerrie since she had last seen that picture, and while, unsuspected by her, Frank was studying first her features and then those of Gretchen, she was struggling frantically with memories of the past.
"Oh, I can almost remember," she whispered, just as Frank's voice broke the spell by saying: