own child in her heart, and
that she knew the rare quality of the love I had for Annie.

"I ought not to have let you come here," she said, more as if speaking to
herself than to me; "they, too, have but one."

"But, Aunt Ann, you could not have kept me out," I whispered.

"Yes, I knew that, my child," she replied; "but no one else would know
it."

From that moment there was between my Aunt Ann and me a subtle bond which
partook of all the holiest mysteries of love. There were both motherhood
and the love of lovers in my love for Annie. Annie's mother felt them, and
was willing to have her own motherhood added to and ministered to by them.
From that moment I believe not even her husband seemed so near to her in
her relation with her child as I.

I will not write out the record of the next two weeks. They seemed, as
they passed, a thousand years; and yet, in looking back on them, they seem
only like one terrible breathless night. My aunt and I alone did all that
was done for Annie. There were whole days and whole nights during which
she talked incessantly, sometimes with such subtle semblance of her own
sweet self that we could hardly believe she did not know what she said;
sometimes with such wild ravings that we shook in terror, and could not
look at her nor at each other. There were other days and nights through
which she lay in a sleep, which seemed-no more like real sleep than the
shrill voice of her ravings had seemed like her real voice. These were
most fearful of all. Through all these days and nights, two men with white
faces and folded arms walked up and down in the rooms below, or crouched
on the thresholds of our doors, listening for sign or word from us. One
was Annie's father, and the other was her lover, George Ware. He was her
second cousin, fifteen years older than she, and had loved her since the
day she was one year old, when at the ceremony of her christening, he, a
proud shy boy of sixteen, had been allowed to carry her up-stairs with her
sweet name resting fresh and new on her little dewy forehead. Ah, seldom
does such love spring and grow and blaze on this earth as had warmed the
very air around Annie from the moment of her birth. George Ware was a man
of rare strength, as this love showed; and with just such faithfulness as
his faithfulness to Annie, he had loved and cared for his mother, who had
been for twenty years a widow. They lived on the outskirts of the town,
in a small house almost bu