“We are all alone now, dear,” he said.
And Ella knew, without any more telling, that her mother was dead.
All that day she crept about with a white face, trying to realize what had happened to her. It seemed impossible to believe that she would never again hear her mother’s voice, or see her gentle smile. At night when she went to bed she could not sleep, and at last she got up and went to the window and stood there looking into the garden. It was very dark and mysterious out there. A wind was blowing among the trees, sighing like somebody in pain, and the moon shone fitfully from behind barred clouds.
And then a strange thing happened; for as Ella stood there, with the tears which she could not restrain rolling down her cheeks, she thought she saw the figure of an old woman among the bushes on the edge of the lawn. It was too dark to see very plainly, but the strange figure seemed to be dressed in a long black cloak and a queer, pointed hat, and to be leaning on a stick. As Ella watched, the moon shone out full for a moment and lighted up the face of the woman, who was staring straight at Ella’s window. It was an old face, but very, very tender, and the smile on the wrinkled lips was so beautiful that Ella stretched out her arms to the figure and gave a cry.
Then the clouds rolled over the face of the moon, and the shadows darkened in the garden; and when Ella looked again, the figure had vanished.
