er to
mention them again I would have treated the proceeding as a bad joke. "I
have got them but I can't show them," she added.

"Not even to me? Ah, Miss Tita!" I groaned, with a voice of infinite
remonstrance and reproach.

She colored, and the tears came back to her eyes; I saw that it cost her
a kind of anguish to take such a stand but that a dreadful sense of duty
had descended upon her. It made me quite sick to find myself confronted
with that particular obstacle; all the more that it appeared to me I
had been extremely encouraged to leave it out of account. I almost
considered that Miss Tita had assured me that if she had no greater
hindrance than that--! "You don't mean to say you made her a deathbed
promise? It was precisely against your doing anything of that sort
that I thought I was safe. Oh, I would rather she had burned the papers
outright than that!"

"No, it isn't a promise," said Miss Tita.

"Pray what is it then?"

She hesitated and then she said, "She tried to burn them, but I
prevented it. She had hid them in her bed."

"In her bed?"

"Between the mattresses. That's where she put them when she took them
out of the trunk. I can't understand how she did it, because Olimpia
didn't help her. She tells me so, and I believe her. My aunt only told
her afterward, so that she shouldn't touch the bed--anything but the
sheets. So it was badly made," added Miss Tita simply.

"I should think so! And how did she try to burn them?"

"She didn't try much; she was too weak, those last days. But she told
me--she charged me. Oh, it was terrible! She couldn't speak after that
night; she could only make signs."

"And what did you do?"

"I took them away. I locked them up."

"In the secretary?"

"Yes, in the secretary," said Miss Tita, reddening again.

"Did you tell her you would burn them?"

"No, I didn't--on purpose."

"On purpose to gratify me?"

"Yes, only for that."

"And what good will you have done me if after all you won't show them?"

"Oh, none; I know that--I know that."

"And did she believe you had destroyed them?"

"I don't know what she believed at the last. I couldn't tell--she was
too far gone."

"Then if there was no promise and no assurance I can't see what ties
you."

"Oh, she hated it so--she hated it so! She was so jealous. But here's
the portrait--you may have that," Miss Tita announced, taking the little
picture, wrapped up in the same manner in which her aunt had wr