erin's faded eyes. "Don't blame it on God," she said. "She will be happier."
Hildegarde caught her breath at that. In her youth and egotism, she had not considered her mother's happiness, but her own "I don't believe she could be happy away from me."
"She has never been happy since she lost your father," Aunt Catherine said.
A wild feeling of jealousy assailed Hildegarde. Was that why she couldn't reach her mother out there in the dark? Was she so happy that she had forgotten earth and all that she had left behind? The thought brought desolation.
"I can't bear it," she said tensely, "to be left alone. I don't know what I am going to do with my life."
"None of us does," said Aunt Catherine. "Olivia and I ain't got much to live for."
Again with youth's selfishness Hildegarde felt that it didn't really matter about Aunt Olivia and Aunt Catherine. They were old; the years did not stretch out interminably before them. And they did not suffer, not with the sharp poignancy of youth. She could not know, of course, that Aunt Olivia and Aunt Catherine did not think of themselves as old. Neither of them was fifty. Hildegarde's mother had died at forty-one.
Some one downstairs was calling Aunt Catherine. She handed the box to Hildegarde.
"There is a letter in it from your mother. I expect you'll be surprised when you read what she has to tell you. She told us she was going to do it, and made us promise not to tell you first."
Hildegarde took the box from her; her heart was
