No one else but Edith was in the room, and she had been attentively watching her aunt’s face. Seeing that strange look settle on it, she crossed the room, and seated herself close to Mrs. Yorke’s side. “Edith,” her aunt said, her eyes still gazing far away, “I think Carl means to be gone a long while.” Edith called up her powers of self-control; for the time of explanation had come. “He has already been away a long while,” she said. “It is six months since he went. That is six months taken from the whole.” Mrs. Yorke’s eyes turned on her niece with a quick searching. “You know all about it!” she exclaimed, and began to breathe quickly. “Yes, I know all about it,” was the calm reply; “and I was to tell you as soon as it should seem best. Carl is making a long journey, but six months of it are over.” Mrs. Yorke flung Edith’s hand away. “You knew it, and his own mother did not!” she exclaimed. “You need not tell me. If Carl deceived his mother, I wish to hear no more about it.” She pressed her hands to her heart, which beat with thick, suffocating throbs. Nothing but firmness would do. It was necessary to recall her to a sense of the injustice she was doing, and shame her into controlling herself, if no better could be done. “Aunt Amy,” Edith said, “it seems to me that you should question yourself, rather than reproach others. Never was a woman more tenderly loved and cared for by her family than you are. Your husband, your children, your niece, your servants even, are constantly on the watch lest something should startle or agitate you. A door must not be slammed, the horses must not be driven too fast, ill news must be gently broken, you must not be fatigued nor worried. If we shed tears, we conceal them from you; if one of us is ill, we make light of it to you. We wish to do this, and do it with all our hearts, for your life is most precious to us. But I think that our devotion entails one duty on you, and that is to look on everything as calmly and reasonably as you can, and not agitate yourself without cause.” Mrs. Yorke looked at her niece in astonishment. This tone of firm reproof was new to her, and, from its strangeness, effective. “Carl did not deceive you,” Edith went on. “He has told you nothing but the truth.” “A half-truth is a lie!” Mrs. Yorke interrupted. “I see plainly in this the influence of that pernicious Mr. Griffeth. I well remember one of his sayings: ‘As the doctors give poisons to a sick body,’ he said, ‘so we must sometimes give lies to a sick mind.’ I have a sick mind, it seems.” “It is for you to prove whether you have or not,” Edith replied quietly. The reproof was severe, and Mrs. Yorke’s heightened color told that she felt it. She leaned back in her chair, and was silent.