Jessy suddenly lifted her arm to shade her eyes; and remained silent. "It _is_ in London, I conclude, that you have been? Come: answer me." "Yes," said Jessy faintly. "And _where_ have you been? In what part of it?--who with?" "Don't ask me," was the low reply, given with a suppressed sob. "Not ask you! But we must ask you. And you must answer. Where have you been, and what have you been doing?" "I--can't tell," sobbed Jessy. "The story is too long." "Story too long!" echoed Susan quickly, "you might say in half-a-dozen words--and leave explanations until to-morrow. Did you find a place in town?" "Yes, I found a place." "A lady's-maid's place?--as you said." Jessy turned her face to the wall, and never spoke. "Now, this won't do," cried Miss Susan, not choosing to be thwarted: and no doubt Jessy, hearing the determined tone, felt something like a reed in her hands. "Just you tell me a little." "I am very ill, Susan; I can't talk much," was the pleading excuse. "If you'd only let me be quiet." "It will no more hurt you to say in a few words where you have been than to make excuses," persisted Miss Susan, giving a flick to the skirt of her new puce silk gown. "Your conduct altogether has been most extraordinary, quite baffling to us at home, and I must hear some explanation of it." "The place I went to was too hard for me," said Jessy after a pause, speaking out of the pillow. "Too hard!" "Yes; too hard. My heart was breaking with its hardness, and I couldn't stop in it. Oh, be merciful to me, Susan! don't ask any more." Susan Page thought that when mysterious answers like these were creeping out, there was all the greater need that she should ask for more. "Who found you the place at first, Jessy?" Not a word. Susan asked again. "I--got it through an advertisement," said Jessy at length. Advertisements in those days, down in our rural district, were looked upon as wonderful things, and Miss Susan opened her eyes in surprise. A faint idea was upon her that Jessy could not be telling the truth. "In that letter that you wrote to us; the only one you did write; you asserted that you liked the place." "Yes. That was at first. But afterwards--oh, afterwards it got cruelly hard." "Why did you not change it for another?" Jessy made no answer. Susan heard the sobs in her throat. "Now, Jessy, don't be silly. I ask why you did not get another place, if you were unable to stay in that one?" "I couldn't have got another, Susan. I would never have got another." "Why not?" persisted Susan. "I--I--don't you see how weak I am?" she asked with some energy, lifting her face for a moment to Susan. And its wan pain, its depth of anguish, disarmed Susan. Jessy looked like a once fair blossom on which a blight had passed. "Well, Jessy, we will leave these matters until later. But there's one thing you must answer. What induced you to take this disreputable mode of coming back?" A dead silence.