Page:Life's little ironies (1894).pdf/87

again. Her bright eyes, brown hair, flowery bonnet, lemon-colored gloves, and flush beauty were like an irradiation into the apartment, which they in their gloom could hardly bear.

“I forgot to tell you,” she said, “of a curious thing which happened to me a mouth or two before my marriage—something which I have thought may have had a connection with the accident to the poor man you have buried to-day. It was on that evening I was at the manor-house waiting for you te fetch me; I was in the winter-garden with Albert, and we were sitting silent together, when we fancied we heard a cry. We opened the door, and while Albert ran to fetch his hat, leaving me standing there, the cry was repeated, and my excited senses made me think I heard my own name, When Albert came back all was silent, and we decided that it was only a drunken shout, and not a cry for help. We both forgot the incident, and it never has occurred to me till since the funeral to-day that it might have been this stranger’s cry. The name of course was only fancy, or he might have had a wife or child with ¢ name something like mine, poor man!”

When she was gone the brothers were silent till Cornelius said, “ Now mark this, Joshua, Sooner or later she'll know.”

"How?"

“From one of us. Do you think human hearts are iron-cased safes, that you suppose we can keep this secret forever ?”

“Yes, I think they are, sometimes,” said Joshua,

“No. It will out. We shal! teil.”

“ What, and ruin her—kill her? Disgrace her children, and pull down the whole auspicious house of Fellmer about our ears? No! May I—drown where he was drowned before I do it! Never, never, Surely you can say the same, Cornelius?”