The parlor door was ajar, and though she could not see her visitor, she could plainly hear the snapping of the wood fire within, which Samantha had kindled. Isabel must be perfectly aware of her return, and of her presence in this sick chamber. Every minute that she hesitated would only augment the widow’s anger at being thus inhospitably neglected. Even if she had relented, and had come with kindly intent, this reception might alter her impulses. She rose to enter the parlor, but still stood irresolute, holding her grandmother’s hand, when there came the sound of footsteps in the front hall--then of a hasty knock on the door opening from the hall into this room in which she was. She opened the door, and before her, excited and jubilant, stood her cousin Seth. “I’ve come to tell you!” he burst out, “It’s all cleared up. There _was_ a murder. Milton did it! He’s just been arrested! I tried to ring your bell, but it didn’t seem to work. So I _had_ to come in! And now----” He opened his arms with an unmistakable gesture, and they closed fondly upon an overjoyed maiden, who sobbed upon his breast for very relief. When she found breath and words, it was to say: “Oh, you can’t guess what I have suffered these last two days; I thought I should never live through them! And now it seems as if I should go wild with joy--as if I couldn’t keep my feet down on the floor!” “Yes, yes, I know, my darling. But we shall be all the happier for this spell of wretchedness. Dry your eyes, pet. There shall be no more thought or talk of tears--much less of dying.” “O Seth!--I forgot!--my grandmother!” She lowered her voice, and told him her fears. Hand in hand, and with his arm about her shoulder, they moved softly to the bedside of the dying woman. The noise of the talking, or some less apparent influence, had aroused her from her lethargy. Her pale eyes were brilliant still, with an unearthly light, it seemed to the awed young man, and she rested their gaze fixedly upon the couple. “Who is that?” she asked in a querulous whisper. “It is Seth, Granny,” the girl answered, relapsing unconsciously into the familiar form she had not used since childhood. The aged woman restlessly moved her head, and her eyes snapped with impatience at her inability to raise herself from the pillow. “I won’t have him here! Tell him to take his arm away. What’s he doin’ here, anyway? He desarted yeh! His own father told me so! Tell him to go away! I hate the sight of the hull breed!” “But he’s come back to me, Granny,” the girl pleaded, while Seth shrank backward in the shadow of the curtain. “Truly he has, and he’s not to blame. And I love him very dearly”--a pressure from the young man’s hand answered the sweetness of this avowal--“and he will be all I shall have left when--when--” she stopped, unwilling to conclude her thought in words.