as saying. Then she heard Aunt
Isabel's voice, no louder than uncle Charlie's but more penetrating; it
had a queer note in it--almost as if she were crying. Suddenly she did
cry out!--And then Uncle Charlie's deep grumble again.

Missy's heart nearly stopped beating. Could it be that Uncle Charlie
had found out?--That he was accusing Aunt Isabel and making her cry? But
surely they wouldn't quarrel in a thunder-storm! Lightning might hit the
house, or anything!

The conjunction of terrors was too much for Missy to bear. Finally she
crept out of bed and to the door. An unmistakable moan issued from Aunt
Isabel's room. And then she saw Uncle Charlie, in bath-robe and pajamas,
coming down the hall from the bathroom. He was carrying a hot-water
bottle.

"Why, what's the matter, Missy?" he asked her. "The storm frighten you?"

Missy nodded; she couldn't voice those other horrible fears which were
tormenting her.

"Well, the worst is over now," he said reassuringly. "Run back to bed.
Your aunt's sick again--I've just been filling the hot-water bottle for
her."

"Is she--very sick?" asked Missy tremulously.

"Pretty sick," answered Uncle Charlie. "But there's nothing you can do.
Jump back into bed."

So Missy crept back, and listened to the gradual steadying down of the
rain. She was almost sorry, now, that the whirlwind of frantic elements
had subsided; that had been a sort of terrible complement to the
whirlwind of anguish within herself.

She lay there tense, strangling a desperate impulse to sob. La Beale
Isoud had died of love--and now Aunt Isabel was already sickening. She
half-realized that people don't die of love nowadays--that happened
only in the Middle Ages; yet, there in the black stormy night, strange,
horrible fancies overruled the sane convictions of daytime. It
was fearfully significant, Aunt Isabel's sickening so quickly, so
mysteriously. And immediately after Mr. Saunders's departure. That was
exactly what La Beale Isoud always did whenever Sir Tristram was obliged
to leave her; Sir Tristram was continually having to flee away, a
kind of knight of the road, too--to this battle or that tourney or
what-not--"here to-day, gone to-morrow, never able to stay where his
heart would wish."

"Oh! oh!"

At last exhaustion had its way with the taut, quivering little body;
the hot eyelids closed; the burning cheek relaxed on the pillow. Missy
slept.

When she awoke, the sun, which is so blithely indiffer