Within two minutes the gardener’s wife came up the road to the gate. She had been down to visit the corpse of her young master; her eyes were red with weeping.
“How do you do, Mr. Redfield? These be miserable times, ain’t they? My very heart is sore in my breast; but I couldn’t cry a tear in the room where he was, a-lying there like life, for Miss Eleanor sot by him like a statue. It made me cold all over to see her—I couldn’t speak to save me. The father and mother are just broke down, too.”
“How is Miss Eleanor, this morning?”
“The Lord knows! She doesn’t do any thing but sit there, as quiet as can be. It’s a bad symptom, to my thinking. ‘Still waters run deep.’ They’re a-dreading the hour when they’ll have to remove the body from the house—they’re afraid her mind ’ll go.”
“No, no,” I answered, inwardly shuddering; “Eleanor’s reason is too fine and powerful to be unstrung, even by a blow like this.”
“Who was that went out the gate as I came around the bend? Was it that girl, again?”
“Do you mean Leesy Sullivan?”
“Yes, sir. Do you know her? She acts mighty queer, to my thinkin’. She was out here Saturday, sittin’ in the summer-house, all alone, ’till the rain began to fall—I guess she got a good soaking going home. I didn’t think much about her; it was Saturday, and I thought likely she was taking a holiday, and there’s many people like to come here, it’s so pleasant. But what’s brought her here again to-day is more’n I can guess. Do you know, sir?”
“I do not. I found her sitting on the portico looking at the river. Maybe she comes out for a walk and stops here to rest. She probably feels somewhat at home, she has sewed so much in the family. I don’t know her at all, myself; I never spoke to her until just now. Did you get much acquainted with her, when she was in the house?”
“I never spoke to her above a dozen times. I wasn’t at the house much, and she was always at work. She seemed fast with her needle, and a girl who minded her own business. I thought she was rather proud, for a seamstress—she was handsome, and I reckon she knew it. She’s getting thinner; she had red spots on her cheeks, Saturday, that I didn’t like—looked consumptive.”