I searched the shadowy room for
the austere and beautiful face of the Mrs. Drainger we knew, and how, in
my confusion, I could see nothing but her hands. Emily mocked me with
her eyes, but did not speak. Then I saw.

"I remember I asked Mrs. Drainger, for some reason, to remove the veil.
I was raw in those days. Emily stiffened behind me and, I thought,
started to speak, but the rigid silence of Mrs. Drainger was never
broken. Her very speechlessness rebuked me. I prescribed for her and got
out of the house.

"If you will believe me, Gillingham," Fawcett went on with a change of
voice, "I have visited that house for twenty years and during that time
Mrs. Drainger, so far as I know, has never divested herself of her veil.
I got that much out of Emily. But I could get no more. She seemed to
freeze when I sought after reasons. I do not know what she had done, but
I do know that the wearing of that black mantle represented to them that
flaming crisis in their relationship when Emily lost forever her one
hope of escape.

"I have watched them for twenty years. Twenty years--think of it! They
were like two granite rocks, clashed once together, and thereafter
frozen into immobility. They have never changed. All pretense of
affection had dropped from them--even before me. There was only naked
hate. Year after weary year, seeing no one, never going anywhere, they
have rasped and worn each other merely by being what they are.

"And now the ultimate ingenuity, the last refinement of unhappiness! The
veil, I say, is a symbol of their shuddering cohesion which death would
normally destroy. But the will of this woman, as it triumphed over life,
she has made to triumph over death: if Emily removes the veil she
becomes, with her lack of training, her useless equipment, a helpless
beggar; if she does not remove it, if she never sees her mother's face,
she will be tormented by memory, bound forever, as she was in life, to a
blank and inscrutable shawl. Is it forgiveness--or justice, mercy or
revenge?"

Fawcett broke off as a swirl of guests flooded the coolness of the
porch.

"I will tell you what happens," I said when I could.

"Do," he returned. "And you must take precautions."

VI

On my way to the office next morning, it suddenly dawned on me what
Fawcett meant. How, in truth, was I to ascertain whether the singular
provision of Mrs. Drainger's will had or had not been met? Fawcett had
not, he said, been present at the