“I have been waiting for you,” she said simply.  She looked at Anne Bullard, and the message in her eyes was plain enough.  But the girl ignored it.  She stood across the bed from me and eyed me steadily.

“My dear,” said Miss Emily, in her high-bred voice, “if you have anything to do, Miss Blakiston will sit with me for a little while.”

“I have nothing to do,” said the girl doggedly.  Perhaps this is not the word.  She had more the look of endurance and supreme patience.  There was no sharpness about her, although there was vigilance.

Miss Emily sighed, and I saw her eyes seek the Bible beside her.  But she only said gently:  “Then sit down, dear.  You can work at my knitting if you like.  My hands get very tired.”

She asked me questions about the house and the garden.  The raspberries were usually quite good, and she was rather celebrated for her lettuces.  If I had more than I needed, would I mind if Mr. Staley took a few in to the doctor, who was fond of them.

The mention of Doctor Lingard took me back to the night of the burglary.  I wondered if to tell Miss Emily would unduly agitate her.  I think I would not have told her, but I caught the girl’s eye, across the bed, raised from her knitting and fixed on me with a peculiar intensity.  Suddenly it seemed to me that Miss Emily was surrounded by a conspiracy of silence, and it roused my antagonism.

“There are plenty of lettuces,” I said, “although a few were trampled by a runaway horse the other night.  It is rather a curious story.”

So I told her of our night visitor.  I told it humorously, lightly, touching on my own horror at finding I had been standing with my hand on the burglar’s shoulder.  But I was sorry for my impulse immediately, for I saw Miss Emily’s body grow rigid, and her hands twist together.  She did not look at me.  She stared fixedly at the girl.  Their eyes met.

It was as if Miss Emily asked a question which the girl refused to answer.  It was as certain as though it had been a matter of words instead of glances.  It was over in a moment.  Miss Bullard went back to her knitting, but Miss Emily lay still.

“I think I should not have told you,” I apologized.  “I thought it might interest you.  Of course nothing whatever was taken, and no damage done—­except to the lettuces.”

“Anne,” said Miss Emily, “will you bring me some fresh water?”

The girl rose reluctantly, but she did not go farther than the top of the staircase, just beyond the door.  We heard her calling to some one below, in her clear young voice, to bring the water, and the next moment she was back in the room.  But Miss Emily had had the opportunity for one sentence.

“I know now,” she said quietly, “that you have found it.”

Anne Bullard was watching from the doorway, and it seemed to me, having got so far, I could not retreat.  I must go on.