"When Emma came to the room she discovered me kneeling, rigid and horror-stricken, above my father's outstretched form. She says that I met her eyes with mine, but that there was no look of life within them. Indeed, I was hardly alive, and have no remembrance of how I was taken from that room or what happened in the house for hours. When I did rouse, Emma was beside me. Her look was one of grief but not of horror, and I saw she had no idea of what had passed between my father and myself during the last few days. Dr. Dudgeon had told her that our father had died of heart-disease, and she believed him, and thought my terror was due to the suddenness of his end and the fact that I was alone with him at the time. "She therefore smiled with a certain faint encouragement when I opened my eyes upon her face, but pushed me back with gentle hand when I tried to rise, saying: "'All is well with father, Hermione,--so think only of yourself just now; I do not think you are able to get up.' "I was only too happy not to make the effort. If only my eyes had never opened! If only I had sunk from unconsciousness into the perfect peace of death! But even that idea made me quake. _He_ was _there_, and I had such a horror of him, that it seemed for a moment that I would rather live forever than to encounter him again, even in a world where the secrets of all hearts lie open. "'Did not father forgive you?' murmured Emma, marking perhaps the expression of my face. "I smiled a bitter smile. "'Do not ever let us talk about father,' I prayed. 'He has condemned me to this house, and that will make me remember him sufficiently without words.' "She rose horror-stricken. "'O Hermione!' she murmured; 'O Hermione!' and hid her face in her hands and wept. "But I lay silent, tearless. "When the funeral procession passed out of the house without us, the people stared. But no thought of there being anything back of this seeming disrespect, save the caprice of two very whimsical girls, seemed to strike the mind of any one. The paper which had held the antidote I had long ago picked up from the laboratory floor; while the open drawer with the packet in it marked _Poison_ had doubtless been shut by Doris on her first entrance into the room after his death. For I not only found it closed, but I never heard any one speak of it, or of any peculiar symptoms attending my father's death.