don't be so heartless!" cried Miss Vane imperiously; then,
checking herself, she pressed her thin lips slightly together and sat
silent, with her eyes fixed on the cups before her.

"Am I heartless? Well, I suppose I am," said the young man, with a
slight mocking smile in which his eyes seemed to take no part. "I am
sorry, but really I can't help it. In the meantime perhaps you will give
me a cup of coffee--for I am famishing after my early flight from
town--and tell me why you telegraphed for me in such a hurry last
night."

Miss Vane filled his cup with a hand that trembled still. Hubert Lepel
watched her movements with interest. He did not often see his kinswoman
display so much agitation. She was not his aunt by any tie of blood--she
was a faraway cousin only; but ever since his babyhood he had addressed
her by that title.

"I sent for you," she said at last, speaking jerkily and hurriedly, as
if the effort were almost more than she could bear--"I sent for you to
tell the General what you yourself telegraphed to me last night."

A flush of dull red color stole into the young man's face. He looked at
her intently, with a contracted brow.

"Do you mean," he said, after a moment's pause, "that you have not told
him yet?"

Miss Vane averted her eyes.

"No," she answered; "I have not told him. You will think me weak--I
suppose I am weak, Hubert--but I dared not tell him."

"And you summoned me from London to break the news? For no other
reason?"

Miss Vane nodded,--"That was all."

Hubert bit his lip and sipped his coffee before saying another word.

"Aunt Leo," he said, after a silence during which Miss Vane gave
unequivocal signs of nervousness, "I really must say that I think the
proceeding was unnecessary." He leaned back in his chair and toyed with
his spoon, a whiteness which Miss Vane was accustomed to interpret as a
sign of anger showing itself about his nostrils and his lips. She had
long looked upon it as an ominous sign.

"Hubert, Hubert, don't be angry--don't refuse to help me!" she said, in
pleading tones, such as he had never heard from her before. "I assure
you that my post in this house is no sinecure. Poor Marion"--she spoke
of Mrs. Sydney Vane--"is rapidly sinking into her grave. Ay, you may
well start! She has never got over the shock of Sydney's death, and the
excitement of the last few days seems to have increased her malady. She
insisted on having every report of the trial read to her