The rest of that night I lay awake in my bed, the scene in the verandah by the big blue-gum-trees haunting me all the time, much as in earlier days the Picture of the murder had pursued and haunted me. Early in the morning I rose up, and went down to Jane in her little parlour. I longed for society in my awe. I needed human presence. I couldn’t bear to be left alone by myself with all these pressing and encompassing mysteries.

“Jane,” I said after a few minutes’ careless talk—for I didn’t like to tell her about my wonderful dream,—“where exactly did you find the picture of that house hanging over in the corner there?”

“Lor’ bless your heart, miss,” Jane answered, “there’s a whole boxful of them at The Grange. Nobody ever cared for them. They’re up in the top attic. They were locked till your papa died, and then they were opened by order of the executors. Some of ‘em’s faded even worse than that one, and none of ‘em’s very good; but I picked this one out because it was better worth framing for my room than most of ‘em. The executors took no notice when they found what they was. They opened the box to see if it was dockyments.”

“Well, Jane,” I said, “I shall go up and bring them every one away with me. It’s possible they may help me to recollect things a bit.” I drew my hand across my forehead. “It all seems so hazy,” I went on. “Yet when I see things again, I sometimes feel as if I almost recognised them.”

So that very morning we went up together (I wouldn’t go alone), and got the rest of the photographs—very faded positives from old-fashioned plates, most of them representing persons and places I had never seen; and a few of them apparently not taken in England.

I didn’t look them all over at once just then. I thought it best not to do so. I would give my memory every possible chance. Take a few at a time, and see what effect they produced on me. Perhaps—though I shrank from the bare idea with horror—they might rouse in my sleep such another stray effort of spontaneous reconstruction. Yet the last one had cost me much nervous wear and tear—much mental agony.

A few days after, I went away from Woodbury. I had learned for the moment, I thought, all that Woodbury could teach me: and I longed to get free again for a while from this pervading atmosphere of mystery. At Aunt Emma’s, at least, all was plain and aboveboard. I would go back to Barton-on-the-Sea, and rest there for a while, among the heathery hills, before proceeding any further on my voyage of discovery.

But I took back Jane with me. I was fond of Jane now. In those two short weeks I had learned to cling to her. Though I remembered her, strictly speaking, no more than at first, yet the affection I must have borne her in my First State seemed to revive in me very easily, like all other emotions. I was as much at home with Jane, indeed, as if I had known her for years. And this wasn’t strange; for I HAD known her for years, in point of fact; and and though I’d forgotten most of those years, the sense of familiarity they had inspired still lived on with me unconsciously. I know now that memory resides chiefly in the brain, while the emotions are a wider endowment of the nervous system in general; so that while a great shock may obliterate whole tracts in the memory, no power on earth can ever alter altogether the sentiments and feelings.

As for Jane, she was only too glad to come with me. There were no lodgers at present, she said; and none expected. Her sister Elizabeth would take care of the rooms, and if any stranger came, why, Lizzie’d telegraph down at once for her. So I wrote to Aunt Emma to expect us both next day. Aunt Emma’s, I knew, was a home where I or mine were always welcome.

Jane had never seen Aunt Emma. There had been feud between the families while my father lived, so she didn’t visit The Grange after my mother’s death. Aunt Emma had often explained to me in part how all that happened. It was the one point in our family history on which she’d ever been explicit: for she had a grievance there; and what woman on earth can ever suppress her grievances? It’s our feminine way to air them before the world, as it’s a man’s to bury them deep in his own breast and brood over them.

My mother, she told me, had been a widow when my father married her—a rich young widow. She had gone away, a mere girl, to Australia with her first husband, a clergyman, who was lost at sea two or three years after, on the voyage home to England without her. She had one little girl by her first husband, but the child died quite young: and then she married my father, who met her first in Australia while she waited for news of the clergyman’s safety. Her family always disapproved of the second marriage. My father had no money, it seemed; and mamma was well off, having means of her own to start with, like Aunt Emma, and having inherited also her first husband’s property, which was very considerable. He had left it to his little girl, and after her to his wife; so that first my father, and then I myself, came in, in the end, to both the little estates, though my mother’s had been settled on the children of the first marriage. Aunt Emma always thought my father had married for money: and she said he had been hard and unkind to mamma: not indeed cruel; he wasn’t a cruel man; but severe and wilful. He made her do exactly as he wished about everything, in a masterful sort of way, that no woman could stand against. He crushed her spirit entirely, Aunt Emma told me; she had no will of her own, poor thing: his individuality was so strong, that it overrode my mother’s weak nature rough-shod.

Not that he was rough. He never scolded her; he never illtreated her; but he said to her plainly, “You are to do so and so;” and she obeyed like a child. She never dared to question him.

So Aunt Emma had always said my mother was badly used, especially in money matters—the money being all, when one came to think of it, her own or her first husband’s;—and as a consequence, auntie was never invited to The Grange during my father’s lifetime.

When we reached Barton-on-the-Sea, Jane and I, on our way from Woodbury, Aunt Emma was waiting at the station to meet us. To my great disappointment, I could see at first sight she didn’t care for Jane: and I could also see at first sight Jane didn’t care for her. This was a serious blow to me, for I leaned upon those two more than I leaned upon anyone; and I had far too few friends in the world of my own, to afford to do without any one of them.

In the evening, however, when I went up to my own room to bed, Jane came up to help me as she always did at Woodbury. I began at once to tax her with not liking Aunt Emma. With a little hesitation, Jane admitted that at first sight she hadn’t felt by any means disposed to care for her. I pressed her hard as to why. Jane held off and prevaricated. That roused my curiosity:—you see, I’m a woman. I insisted upon knowing.

“Oh, miss, I can’t tell you!” Jane cried, growing red in the face, “I can’t bear to say it out. You oughtn’t to ask. It’ll hurt you to know I even thought such a thing of her!”

“You MUST tell me, ............