"Hush, hush, be quiet and listen to me: I rushed back to my room; I found Tracy pale with horror; and when I told her that the child was dead, she wrung her hands, and again cried out that you had killed her--murdered her. My rage then grew so dreadful, that it overpowered hers. You know, alas! you know, how fearfully I can give way to anger; but it must have been horrible that day, for that iron-nerved and ungovernable woman trembled like a leaf before me. I forced her to promise, that if you did not accuse yourself, she would never reveal what she had seen, or let it be known that she had been at Elmsley that day. I made her leave the house in secret, and laid the strictest commands upon my servant not to tell any one that she had been with me, which, as he evidently suspected me of a love affair with Alice, seemed to him quite natural. Hitherto she has kept her word to me; but I cannot conceal from you that no efforts of mine have ever succeeded in rooting out of her mind the conviction that Julia's death was not accidental. In the stupid and malicious obstinacy of her nature, she persists in believing that you intentionally removed the obstacle that stood between you and the eventual possession of Mr. Middleton's fortune. She had been unfortunately told by some of the servants of the house, at her previous visit to Elmsley, that there were constant disputes between you and Julia; and her suspicious jealousy on Alice's account had worked her up into such animosity against you, that she even then carried home with her the idea that you hated and persecuted my sister's child. She has, however, as I have already told you, kept her word to me; but there is one circumstance under which I am perfectly certain that she would break it; and that is, if, by a marriage with Edward, she saw you on the point of obtaining those worldly advantages, which she supposes that you sought in so dreadful a manner. She is haunted by the idea that Mr. Middleton will leave his fortune to you; and, by a strange mixture of vengeance and conscientiousness, she is really tormented by the belief that she is committing a heinous sin in keeping the truth from him; and the only way which I could find of calming her scruples, was by informing her of the conditions under which I happen to know that your uncle has settled his property, and by solemnly assuring her that you will never submit to them." "Thank you," I answered coldly, and got up to go. Everything in that moment seemed turned to stone. I owed Henry an immense debt of gratitude according to this account, but not an atom of it could I show or feel. On the contrary, ail the evil in my nature was stirred up, and I felt more than I had ever done before, as if I hated him. Perhaps it was that he had proved to me what I had hitherto never in reality believed, though I had often said it to myself, and that was, that a barrier indeed existed between me and Edward, which no effort of mine could remove.