managed.

"Everyone can be managed by my aunt," said Miss Tita. And then she
observed that her holiday was over; she must go home.

I laid my hand on her arm, across the table, to stay her a moment. "What
I want of you is a general promise to help me."

"Oh, how can I--how can I?" she asked, wondering and troubled. She was
half-surprised, half-frightened at my wishing to make her play an active
part.

"This is the main thing: to watch her carefully and warn me in time,
before she commits that horrible sacrilege."

"I can't watch her when she makes me go out."

"That's very true."

"And when you do, too."

"Mercy on us; do you think she will have done anything tonight?"

"I don't know; she is very cunning."

"Are you trying to frighten me?" I asked.

I felt this inquiry sufficiently answered when my companion murmured in
a musing, almost envious way, "Oh, but she loves them--she loves them!"

This reflection, repeated with such emphasis, gave me great comfort; but
to obtain more of that balm I said, "If she shouldn't intend to destroy
the objects we speak of before her death she will probably have made
some disposition by will."

"By will?"

"Hasn't she made a will for your benefit?"

"Why, she has so little to leave. That's why she likes money," said Miss
Tita.

"Might I ask, since we are really talking things over, what you and she
live on?"

"On some money that comes from America, from a lawyer. He sends it every
quarter. It isn't much!"

"And won't she have disposed of that?"

My companion hesitated--I saw she was blushing. "I believe it's mine,"
she said; and the look and tone which accompanied these words betrayed
so the absence of the habit of thinking of herself that I almost thought
her charming. The next instant she added, "But she had a lawyer once,
ever so long ago. And some people came and signed something."

"They were probably witnesses. And you were not asked to sign? Well
then," I argued rapidly and hopefully, "it is because you are the
legatee; she has left all her documents to you!"

"If she has it's with very strict conditions," Miss Tita responded,
rising quickly, while the movement gave the words a little character
of decision. They seemed to imply that the bequest would be accompanied
with a command that the articles bequeathed should remain concealed from
every inquisitive eye and that I was very much mistaken if I thought she
was the person to depart from an injunctio