The Last of the Mortimers

mething they were concealing from me, mixing them both up together in my mind. I rose very uneasy and excited, not a bit refreshed, as one should feel in the morning. One thing very strange I ha

which makes me have a great confidence, not in what you would call dreams, you know, but in the sentiment of dreams, if you can understand what I mean. I woke up very unrefreshed, as I say; and got dressed and came downstairs as soon as it was daylight, though I knew well enough I should find nobody there. My

voking puss, and poured out her coffee. And after ten minutes or so we got on chatting just as usual, which was a relief to me, for I don’t like apologies and explanations. I never could bear them. Little Sara, after she had got o

some change. Not to speak of that little nervous motion of her head and hands, which was greater to-day than ever I had seen it, there was a strange vigilance and watchfulness in her look which I don’t remember to have ever seen there before. She looked me very full in the face, I remember with a sort of daring defying openness, and the same to little Sara, though, of course what{36} could the child know? All over, down to her very hands, as she went on with

me that afternoon after dinner, as she did when she had anything particular to say, I confess my heart went thump against my breast, and I trembled all over. However, I

well about Richard Mortimer?” Sarah

yesterday when he was here. Did yo

rah, in her bitter way. “I want you to bestir yoursel

ave taken it up now? I have seen such a thing: one falls off one’s anxiety somehow, one can’t tell how; and lo! the reason is, that the thing’s coming about

dashing down her knitting-pin out of her hand, stamping her foot on the footstool, and half screaming out in her sharp, strangled whisper, that sounded like the very voice of rage itself— {37} “The fool! the fool! oh, the fool! Shall I be obliged to leave my home and my seclusion and do it myself? I that might have been so different! Good God! shall I be obliged to

ut what Ellis came for,—as if she could have killed me for the least motion. I got so excited myself that I could hardly see the name on the card Ellis brought in. Sarah’s looks, not to say her words, had put it so clearly in my mind that something was going to happen, that my self-possession almost forsook me. I let the card flutter down out of my hand when I lifted it off the tray, and did not hear a single syllable of what the man was saying till

—just in her usual way, and took up the dropt stitches in her knitting. But I could very well see that her hand trembled. As she did not say any more, I tho

ll, Sarah,” cried I, in desperation, “I will w

d of her. I got up as fast as I could, and went off to the writing-table at the other end of the room. There was nothing I would not do