The western clouds wore their quiet twilight colors already: the close of day had come.
The moment she moved the chair, she felt her mother's hand on her shoulder. When she turned again toward the bed, she saw her mother's eyes open and looking at her—looking at her, as she thought, with a change in their expression, a change to vacancy.
"Why do I talk of heaven?" she said, turning her face suddenly toward the darkening sky, and speaking in low, muttering tones. "How do I know I am fit to go there? And yet, Rosamond, I am not guilty of breaking my oath to my mistress. You can say for me that I never destroyed the letter, and that I never took it away with me when I left the house. I tried to get it out of the Myrtle Room; but I only wanted to hide it somewhere else. I never thought to take it away from the house: I never meant to break my oath."
"It will be dark soon, mother. Let me get up for one moment to light the candles."
Her hand crept softly upward, and clung fast round Rosamond's neck.
"I never swore to give him the letter," she said. "There was no crime in the hiding of it. You found it in a picture, Rosamond? They used to call it a picture of the Porthgenna ghost. Nobody knew how old it was, or when it came into the house. My mistress hated it, because the painted face had a strange likeness to hers. She told me, when first I lived at Porthgenna, to take it down from the wall and destroy it. I was afraid to do that; so I hid it away, before ever you were born, in the Myrtle Room. You found the letter at the back of the picture, Rosamond? And yet that was a likely place to hide it in. Nobody had ever found the picture. Why should any body find the letter that was hid in it?"
"Let me get a light, mother! I am sure you would like to have a light!"
"No! no light now. Give the darkness time to gather down there in the corner of the room. Lift me up close to you, and let me whisper."
The clinging arm tightened its grasp as Rosamond raised her in the bed. The fading light from the window fell full on her face, and was reflected dimly in her vacant eyes.
"I am waiting for something that comes at dusk, before the candles are lit," she whispered in low, breathless tones. "My mistress!—down there!" And she pointed away to the farthest corner of the room near the door.