"They are not home from shooting yet, Anne, so we can have a little talk to ourselves. When they go to the far covers, there's no knowing when they'll be in: two nights ago they kept me waiting dinner until eight o'clock."
"Who did, Aunt Selina?"
"Mr. Barley, and the rest," she answered, carelessly. "Anne, how very strange it was that your mamma should have died so quickly at the last! It was only two weeks before her death that she wrote to tell me she was ill."
"She had been ill longer than that, Aunt Selina——"
"Call me Selina, child."
"But she did not tell any one until she knew there was danger. She did not tell me."
"It was a renewal of that old complaint she had in India—that inward complaint."
I turned my head and my wet eyes from her. "They told me it was her heart, Selina."
"Yes; in a measure; that had something to do with it. It must have been a sad parting, Anne. Why, child, you are sobbing!"
"Please don't talk of it!"