Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/252

 thought that he—had had something to do with the thing. That idea came to me even then, because everybody talked about the way Lady Hereward felt toward Ian, and how it was through her he gave up his place. I begged him to take me, and said I couldn't stay upstairs, alone. I told him I could bear whatever we might have to see. So I went down the stairs behind Ian, and we found the door of the ground-floor room a little open. Ian said, 'I must have forgotten to lock it!' You see from what we heard, we weren't quite sure whether the voices came from the inside of the Tower or outside. We couldn't have seen from the one window in our room, anyway, even if we had looked out, which of course we didn't. It was bad enough to hear such things; but as there was no glass in the window, which had been broken a long time, we couldn't shut out the sounds. When Ian pushed the door wider open, I peeped over his shoulder, and—I saw her. Oh, the look in her staring eyes! It was too agonizing. I forgave her everything, and I hated you. I have hated you ever since."

"You can't hate me more than I hate myself," Sir Ian groaned. But the bitter anguish in face and voice waked no pity in the girl's heart, full of gentle compassion for others.

"We saw at once she was dead. There couldn't be any mistake in an expression like that. I pulled