"No, I'm not hurt, Aunt Effie. I had just gone to ask Dad about one of the letters when the portrait fell," Gene explained as she stood swaying, her thin, delicate hand gripping his arm until the fingers almost disappeared in the folds of his coatsleeve. "Mr. Titheredge says it was a sheer accident, but after what Rannie said at dinner to-night; after we know how we've all felt since Jule—" He broke off and added: "Ouch! Aunt Effie, you hurt!"
She removed her hand from his arm and repeated mechanically in a dazed fashion:
"You had gone to ask your stepfather about one of the letters?"
"Yes. These condolence things, you know. But I'm sure it couldn't have been an accident! Why should that one picture in all this house have fallen just at the moment when I left the desk? I'd been sitting there for more than an hour."
"What a merciful blessing that you escaped!" Miss Effie spoke in a low tone, then added quickly with a sharper note: "But I—it was I who asked you to reply to the letters, and suggested that you use the library desk here! I even arranged the light for you! Had you been killed it would have been my fault!"
"Come, Miss Meade, that's all nonsense!" Samuel Titheredge stepped forward. "No one can foresee accidents; and that portrait has hung there more than twenty years without falling. In any event it is all right; Gene wasn't hurt, and you and the girls had better go back to bed and try to forget all about it."
As if conscious for the first time of their appearance she
