e, not the girl,
he loved. He says he is too poor for us to dream of marrying when I
have nothing. Oh, such a cruel, heartless letter! Why did he not kill
me? It would have been so much more merciful! I loved him so--I
trusted him so! Oh, Winnie, Winnie, what am I to do!'

"There was something terrible in the contrast between her passionate
words and her calm face and lifeless voice. I wanted to call Mother,
but she would not let me. She went away to her own room, trailing
along the dark hall in her dress and veil, and locked herself in.

"Well, I told it all to the others in some fashion. You can imagine
their anger and dismay. Your father, Amy--he was a hot-blooded,
impetuous, young fellow then--went at once to seek Willis Starr. But
he was gone, no one knew where, and the whole country rang with the
gossip and scandal of the affair. Eliza knew nothing of this, for she
was ill and unconscious for many a day. In a novel or story she would
have died, I suppose, and that would have been the end of it. But this
was in real life, and Eliza did not die, although many times we
thought she would.

"When she did recover, how frightfully changed she was! It almost
broke my heart to see her. Her very nature seemed to have changed
too--all her joyousness and light-heartedness were dead. From that
time she was a faded, dispirited creature, no more like the Eliza we
had known than the merest stranger. And then after a while came other
news--Willis Starr was married to the other Eliza Laurance, the true
heiress. He had made no second mistake. We tried to keep it from Eliza
but she found it out at last. That was the day she came up here alone
and packed this old chest. Nobody ever knew just what she put into it.
But you and I see now, Amy--her ball dress, her wedding gown, her love
letters and, more than all else, her youth and happiness--this old
chest was the tomb of it all. Eliza Laurance was really buried here.

"She went home soon after. Before she went she exacted a promise from
Mother that the old chest should be left at the Grange unopened until
she came for it herself. But she never came back, and I do not think
she ever intended to, and I never saw her again.

"That is the story of the old chest. It was all over so long ago--the
heartbreak and the misery--but it all seems to come back to me now.
Poor Eliza!"

My own eyes were full of tears as Aunt Winnifred went down the stairs,
leaving me sitting dreamily there in t