Mrs. Daniels must--"
But at that moment the door opened and Mrs. Daniels came in.
CHAPTER XIV
MRS. DANIELS
She still wore her bonnet and shawl and her face was like marble.
"You want me?" said she with a hurried look towards Mr. Blake that had
as much fear as surprise in it.
"Yes," murmured that gentleman moving towards her with an effort we
could very well appreciate. "Mrs. Daniels, who was the girl you
harbored in that room above us for so long? Speak; what was her name
and where did she come from?"
The housekeeper trembling in every limb, cast us one hurried appeal.
"Speak!" reechoed Mr. Gryce; "the time for secrecy has passed."
"O," cried she, sinking into a chair from sheer inability to stand,
"it was your wife, Mr. Blake, the young creature you--"
"Ah!"
All the agony, the hopelessness, the love, the passion of those last
few months flashed up in that word. She stopped as if she had been
shot, but seeing the hand which he had hurriedly raised, fall slowly
before him, went on with a burst,
"O sir, she made me swear on my knees I would never betray her, no
matter what happened. When not two weeks after your father died she
came to the house and asking for me, told me all her story and all
her love; how she could not reconcile it with her idea of a wife's
duty to live under any other roof than that of her husband, and
lifting off the black wig which she wore, showed me how altered she
had made herself by that simple change--in her case more marked by
the fact that her eyes were in keeping with black hair, while with
her own bright locks they always gave you a shock as of something
strange and haunting--I gave up my will as if forced by a magnetic
power, and not only opened the house to her but my heart as well;
swearing to all she demanded and keeping my oath too, as I would
preserve my soul from sin and my life from the knife of the
destroyer.
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