The girl answered the knock, and on recognizing who it was caught her breath sharply. She had not seen Mrs. Googe during the past month of misery and shame and excitement, and previous to that she had avoided Champney Googe's mother on account of the humiliation her love for the son had suffered at that son's hands--a humiliation which struck at the roots of all that was truest and purest in that womanhood, which was drying up the clear-welling spring of her buoyant temperament, her young enjoyment in life and living and all that life offers of best to youth--offers once only. She started back at the sight of those dark eyes glowing with an unnatural fire, at the haggard face, its pallor accentuated by the white burnous. One thought had time to flash into consciousness before the woman standing on the threshold could speak: here was suffering to which her own was as a candle light to furnace flame. "I've come to see Mrs. Champney, Aileen; is she in the library?" "Yes,"--the girl's lips trembled,--"shall I tell her you are here?" "No." She threw aside her cloak as if in great haste; Aileen took it and laid it on a chair. Mrs. Googe went swiftly to the library door and rapped. Aileen heard the "Come in," and the exclamation that followed: "So you've come at last, have you!" She knew that tone of voice and what it portended. She put her fingers in her ears to shut out further sound of it, and ran down the hall to the back passageway, closed the door behind her and stood there trembling from nervousness.--Had Mrs. Googe obtained some inkling that she had a message to deliver from that son?--a message she neither could nor would deliver? Did Champney Googe's mother know that she had seen that son in the quarry woods? Mrs. Googe's friends had told her the truth of the affair at the sheepfold, when it was found that her unanswered suspicions were liable to unsettle her reason.--Could she know of that message? Could any one? The mere presence in the house of this suffering woman set Aileen's every nerve tingling with sickening despair. She determined to wait there in the dimly lighted back hall until Octavius should make his appearance, be it soon or late; he always came through here on his way to the ell. Aurora Googe looked neither to right nor left on entering the room. She went straight to the library table, on the opposite side of which Mrs. Champney was still sitting where Octavius had left her nearly two hours before. She stemmed both hands on it as if finding the support necessary. Fixing her eyes, already beginning to glaze with the increasing fever, upon her sister-in-law, she spoke, but with apparent effort: "Yes, I've come, at last, Almeda--I've come to ask help for my boy--" Mrs. Champney interrupted her; she was trembling visibly, even Aurora Googe saw that. "I suppose this is Octavius Buzzby's doings. When I gave him that message it was final--_final_, do you hear?"