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 wouldn't have told Marise anything, and would have kept anybody's else mouth shut. It came out casually, for one thing, that she had sequestered that newspaper I saw, before Marise had a chance to look at it. Well, it looked as though the first thing was to get Flora home where I could stand guard over her, till the thing blew over." He burst out savagely, "Good God! How was I to dream that she was so sick!" He made some violent gesture which his old kinswoman felt, but could not see in the darkness.

"But she was. When we went to see her that afternoon, the doctor was there with her, and told me there wasn't a chance in a thousand for her. Double pneumonia. We saw her for a moment that afternoon, and the minute Marise went to bed that evening, I went back. But I was too late. Hetty, you never saw anything like how young she looked … like a little girl, as if she'd died without having lived. The nice old Sister who had taken care of her had put flowers around her, white roses. And she was crying. She was about the only friend Flora had, the only one of them who didn't want something out of her."

Cousin Hetty's face was wet with tears, but she let them fall silently, not stirring a hand to wipe them away.

Her cousin stirred a great deal, moving restlessly on the bench, folding and refolding his arms impatiently.

"The next three days—I never went through such a crazy performance—enough to drive a man out of his mind. The music-teacher I told you about took Marise off with her, up to the mountains somewhere where her old home was, until the day of the funeral. I don't know how I could have managed without that. I couldn't have had Marise around, while I was trying to hush up the coroner's men, or whoever they were.

"As soon as I got in touch with the dead boy's family, I found out where a lot of the trouble came from. The police had come down from Saint Sauveur, just as a matter of routine, to go through the motions of an investigation and had gone to where we lived, because they thought Flora was there. But she'd gone to the convent, so they saw our old cook and