Page:Haworth's.djvu/92

72 "I believe so," he answered.

She sat for a moment, rubbing her hand slowly as before, and then she spoke.

"So much the worse," she said,—"so much the worse for me."

She went up to her room when she left him. It was a little room in the second story, and she had become fond of it. She often sat alone there. She had been sitting at its window when Rachel Ffrench had driven by in the afternoon. The window was still open she saw as she entered, and a gust of wind passing through it had scattered several light articles about the floor. She went to pick them up. They were principally loose papers, and as she bent to raise the first one she discovered that it was yellow with age and covered with a rough drawing of some mechanical appliance. Another and another presented the same plan—drawn again and again, elaborately and with great pains at times, and then hastily as if some new thought had suggested itself. On several were written dates, and on others a few words.

She was endeavoring to decipher some of these faintly written words when a fresh gust of rising wind rushed past her as she stood, and immediately there fell upon her ear a slight ghostly rustle. Near her was a small unused closet whose door had been thrown open, and as she turned toward it there fluttered from one of the shelves a sheet of paper yellower than the rest. She picked it up and read the words written upon the back of the drawing. They had been written twenty-six years before.

"To-day the child was born. It is a boy. By the time he is a year old my work will be done."

The girl's heart began to beat quickly. The papers rustled again, and a kind of fear took possession of her.