Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/239

 the sad details of that harrowing story; again she saw and pitied the silent, hopeless grief of the bereaved and sorrow-stricken old man, whose voiceless woe was more eloquent than the most expressive words; again she seemed to pass that nameless and unmarked grave, where she dared not pause to drop a tear, and over which the tenderest love ventured not to place a stone or a flower. And when, by a powerful effort of self-will, she at last succeeded in turning her mind away from this dreadful subject—there rose up before her the recollection of her unwilling interview with the two women who had so rudely accosted her in the street on her way home, and she naturally began to wonder who they were and what they could have meant.

She had never spoken to either of them before, and knew nothing of them beyond what she had told her grandmother. What, then, could they know of her or her affairs?

But as Alice pondered this question curiously, a new thought took possession of her mind. The woman had spoken of her father—how oddly the words sounded to her ears