“Hey-day, my darling, where now?  Off to Annie’s, as usual?”

He had not heard the tidings!  Should I tell him?  I might never see him again; only too well I knew the terrible danger into which I was going.  But he might forbid me.

“Yes, off to Annie’s,” I said in a gay tone, and kissing him sprang down the steps.

I did not see my father again for eighteen days.

On the steps of my uncle’s house I met old Jane, a colored woman who had nursed Annie Ware when she was a baby, and who lived now in a little cottage near by, from whose door-steps she could see Annie’s window, and in whose garden she raised flowers of all sorts, solely for the pleasure of carrying them to Annie every day.

Jane’s face was positively gray with sorrow and fear.  She looked at me with a strange sort of unsympathizing hardness in her eyes.  She had never loved me.  I knew what she thought.  She was saying to herself:  “Why not this one instead of the other?”

“O auntie!” I said, “I would die for Annie; you know I would.”

At this she melted.  “O honey! don’ ye say that.  The Lord”—­but she could say no more.  She threw her apron up over her head and strode away.

The doors of the house stood open.  I walked through room after room, and found no human being.  At last, at the foot of the stairs in the back part of the house, I came upon all the servants huddled together in a cowering, weeping group.  Flat on the floor, with his face to the wall, lay black Caesar, the coachman.  I put my hand on his shoulder.  He jerked away impatiently.

“Yer jest lemme lone, will yer?” he said in a choking voice; then lifting up his head, and seeing it was I, he half sprang to his feet, with a look of shame and alarm, and involuntarily carrying his hand to his head, said:—­

“O miss! who’s gwine to think yer”—­here he too broke down, and buried his face in his great hands.

I did not speak, but the little group instinctively opened to let me pass up the stairs.  I had a vague consciousness that they said something as I turned into a little cross-hall which led to Annie’s room; but without attending to their words I opened her door.  The room was empty; the bed stripped of clothes; the windows wide open.  I sank into a chair, and looked from side to side.  I was too late, after all!  That was why none of the servants dared speak to me.  A little slipper of Annie’s lay on the floor by the bed.  I took it up and turned it over and over in my hands.  Then I became conscious that my Aunt Ann was speaking to me,—­was calling me by name, earnestly, repeatedly, with terror in her voice.

“My dear, dear child; Helen, Helen, Helen, she is not dead.  She is in my room.  Come and see for yourself.”

I had seen my Aunt Ann every day for nineteen years,—­I never knew her until that moment; I never saw her real face until that moment.

I followed her slowly through rooms and passageways till she reached her own chamber.  The door was open; the room was very dark.  On the threshold she paused, and whispered, “You must not be frightened, darling.  She will not know you.  She has not known any one for six hours.”