"Yes, my dear; I will go and tell her you are here."
The housekeeper went up-stairs, but reappeared almost immediately.
"You are to go up-stairs, my dear," she said; "Miss Henderson is not very well, and will see you in her own room."
Miss Rose ascended the stairs, entered the chamber of the heiress, and Catty heard the door closed and locked after her. As Mrs. Hill re-entered the dining-room, she found her gathering up her work.
"I left the yokes and wristbands in your room, aunt," she explained. "I must go after them, and I'll just go up and finish this nightgown there."
There were four rooms up-stairs, with a hall running between each two. The two on the left were occupied by Miss Henderson, one being her bedroom, the other a bath-room. Mrs. Hill had the room opposite the heiress, the other being used by Rosie, the chambermaid.
Miss Clowrie (one hates to tell it, but what is to be done?) went deliberately to Miss Henderson's door, and applied first her eye, then her ear, to the key-hole. Applying her eye, she distinctly beheld Miss Olive Henderson, the heiress of Redmon, the proudest woman she had ever known, down upon her knees, before Miss Rose, the governess—the ex-school-mistress; holding up her closed hands, in wild supplication, her face like the face of a corpse, and all her black hair tumbled and falling about her.
To say that Miss Catty Clowrie was satisfied by this sight, would be doing no sort of justice to the subject. The first words she caught were not likely to lessen her astonishment—wild, strange words.
"I thought you were dead! I thought you were dead!" in a passion of consternation, that seemed to blot out every thought of prudence. "I thought you were dead! As Heaven hears me, I thought you were dead, or I never would have done it."
Miss Rose was standing with her back to the door, and the eavesdropper saw her trying to raise the heiress up.