There was no keeping back the question. "What was in it?" I cried. "What was written there?" I saw her old mouth shut as if she meant to show me that I need expect no disclosure from her. "I don't know, Mr. Estabrook," said she. In her eyes, perhaps distorted by the strong lenses of her glasses, I saw the challenge of stubbornness. I felt myself growing wild with a desire to break through the unwholesome mystery which had entangled me, and overcome by any means the silence of this woman. She had arisen. She was within my reach. And I believe that I put my hands upon her, catching her two round and fleshy shoulders under my curved palms, shaking her to and fro with the excess of my excitement. In that moment before I spoke to her, she looked up at me, surprise and terror written on her face. "Tell me!" I roared. "You know this horrible, hidden thing. Confound you, tell me!" Her expression changed. I saw surprise become craftiness and fear, distrust. I saw in her eyes the beginning of that hate which I believe has never, since that irresponsible moment, diminished. "You had best leave go of me, Mr. Estabrook," she said calmly. "You would not act so if the old Judge was alive and here. Nor his daughter, sir!" The rebuke, you may believe, was enough. "I'm sorry," I said. The old woman, however, wrung her hands and looked toward the room above as if to indicate to me that nothing was important but the fact that Julianna had possession of the Judge's _post-mortem_ message. "Let her tell you if she will," she cried. Then covering her face with her fat hands, as if to hide some terrible picture of the imagination, she stumbled forward out of the library. I have often wondered since, as I wonder to-night, when those spectres have arisen again, what that old servant meant. At the time it never occurred to me that but one thing could happen. I had the utmost confidence in Julianna, and indeed, without thinking much of my own troubles, I passed that long vigil in the library only with regret that I could not wrest away from the true and noble woman who had promised to be my wife, all the terrible grief which, alone in the chamber above, she must have been suffering. For the first time, I think, in all my life, which, by training and inherited instincts, had been devoted, I might say, to the welfare of the Estabrook name and of myself, I felt my mind--and even my body--filled with a strange and passionate desire to be the instrument of good, not for myself, but in the name of others and perhaps in the name of God. My eyes filled with tears, springing not so much from grief as from belief in myself, not so much from weakness as from strength. I called upon an unknown force that I felt to be near me and directing me. "Save her from misfortune," I said aloud in that silent room. "Protect her. Comfort her."