y,

"THOMAS AMBLECROM."

THE SHADOWS ON THE WALL

"Henry had words with Edward in the study the night before Edward
died," said Caroline Glynn.

She was elderly, tall, and harshly thin, with a hard colourlessness of
face. She spoke not with acrimony, but with grave severity. Rebecca
Ann Glynn, younger, stouter and rosy of face between her crinkling
puffs of gray hair, gasped, by way of assent. She sat in a wide
flounce of black silk in the corner of the sofa, and rolled terrified
eyes from her sister Caroline to her sister Mrs. Stephen Brigham, who
had been Emma Glynn, the one beauty of the family. She was beautiful
still, with a large, splendid, full-blown beauty; she filled a great
rocking-chair with her superb bulk of femininity, and swayed gently
back and forth, her black silks whispering and her black frills
fluttering. Even the shock of death (for her brother Edward lay dead
in the house,) could not disturb her outward serenity of demeanour.
She was grieved over the loss of her brother: he had been the youngest,
and she had been fond of him, but never had Emma Brigham lost sight of
her own importance amidst the waters of tribulation. She was always
awake to the consciousness of her own stability in the midst of
vicissitudes and the splendour of her permanent bearing.

But even her expression of masterly placidity changed before her sister
Caroline's announcement and her sister Rebecca Ann's gasp of terror and
distress in response.

"I think Henry might have controlled his temper, when poor Edward was
so near his end," said she with an asperity which disturbed slightly
the roseate curves of her beautiful mouth.

"Of course he did not KNOW," murmured Rebecca Ann in a faint tone
strangely out of keeping with her appearance.

One involuntarily looked again to be sure that such a feeble pipe came
from that full-swelling chest.

"Of course he did not know it," said Caroline quickly. She turned on
her sister with a strange sharp look of suspicion. "How could he have
known it?" said she. Then she shrank as if from the other's possible
answer. "Of course you and I both know he could not," said she
conclusively, but her pale face was paler than it had been before.

Rebecca gasped again. The married sister, Mrs. Emma Brigham, was now
sitting up straight in her chair; she had ceased rocking, and was
eyeing them both intently with a sudden accentuation of family likeness
in her face. Given one co