y.

Mrs. Mosey looked at her in vacant surprise.

"I wish to say, miss, that your aunt has frightened me."

Even that vague allusion was enough for Emily.

"You need say no more," she replied. "I know but too well how my aunt's
mind is affected by the fever."

Confused and frightened as she was, Mrs. Mosey still found relief in her
customary flow of words.

"Many and many a person have I nursed in fever," she announced. "Many
and many a person have I heard say strange things. Never yet, miss, in
all my experience--!"

"Don't tell me of it!" Emily interposed.

"Oh, but I _must_ tell you! In your own interests, Miss Emily--in your
own interests. I won't be inhuman enough to leave you alone in the house
to-night; but if this delirium goes on, I must ask you to get another
nurse. Shocking suspicions are lying in wait for me in that bedroom, as
it were. I can't resist them as I ought, if I go back again, and hear
your aunt saying what she has been saying for the last half hour and
more. Mrs. Ellmother has expected impossibilities of me; and Mrs.
Ellmother must take the consequences. I don't say she didn't warn
me--speaking, you will please to understand, in the strictest
confidence. 'Elizabeth,' she says, 'you know how wildly people talk in
Miss Letitia's present condition. Pay no heed to it,' she says. 'Let it
go in at one ear and out at the other,' she says. 'If Miss Emily asks
questions--you know nothing about it. If she's frightened--you know
nothing about it. If she bursts into fits of crying that are dreadful
to see, pity her, poor thing, but take no notice.' All very well,
and sounds like speaking out, doesn't it? Nothing of the sort! Mrs.
Ellmother warns me to expect this, that, and the other. But there is one
horrid thing (which I heard, mind, over and over again at your aunt's
bedside) that she does _not_ prepare me for; and that horrid thing
is--Murder!"

At that last word, Mrs. Mosey dropped her voice to a whisper--and waited
to see what effect she had produced.

Sorely tried already by the cruel perplexities of her position, Emily's
courage failed to resist the first sensation of horror, aroused in her
by the climax of the nurse's hysterical narrative. Encouraged by
her silence, Mrs. Mosey went on. She lifted one hand with theatrical
solemnity--and luxuriously terrified herself with her own horrors.

"An inn, Miss Emily; a lonely inn, somewhere in the country; and a
comfortless room at the inn, wit