“I have no patience with any of them,” she muttered, “and now there is a new one to plague me,” and “Moll o’ the graves” saw in her mind’s eye a slim, graceful girl of twelve, endowed with an unparalleled refinement of beauty. “What do they mean by bringing that child to Holwick Hall,” she continued, “as if things were not bad enough already,--a-running round and waiting on folk, a-tending the sick and all the rest of it? Let them die! I like them to die. Self-sacrifice and self-control forsooth! They say she is clever and well-schooled and mistress of herself and withal sympathetic. What’s the good of unselfishness and self-control? No, liberty, liberty--that’s the thing for you, Moll. Self-control, indeed!” and again the ghastly laugh rang through the night air. “Yes, liberty, Moll,--liberty. Are you not worth more than all their church-ridden priests and docile unselfish children? What avails unselfishness and affection? Father Laurence and Aline Gillespie, there’s a pair of them! No, hate is the thing, hate is better than love. Scandal and spite and jealousy--that’s true joy, that’s the true woman, Moll,” and she rubbed her hands with unholy mirth. As she talked to herself the moon rose and gradually the churchyard became light. “Love!” she went on, “love! Yes, Oswald, that’s where they laid you,” she said, as she looked at the next place to the open grave. “Ah, but hate got the better of your love, for all that, fine big man that you were, a head taller than the rest of the parish, and all the girls after you, too!” She looked at the side of the open grave, where the end of a bone protruded. She pulled it out. It was a femur of unusual size. “Yes, Oswald,” she repeated, “and that’s yours. You did not think I would be holding your thigh-bone these forty years after! “Ha! you loved me, did you? I was a pretty lass then. Yes, you loved me, I know you loved me. You would have died for me, and I loved you, too. But little Sarah loved you and you loved her. I know you loved me most, but I would not have that. ‘I should have controlled myself,’ you say; ha! I was jealous and I hated you. Self-control and love;--no, no, liberty and hate, liberty and hate; and when you were ill I came to see you and I saw the love-light in your eyes. They thought you would get well. Of course you would have got well; but there you were, great big, strong man, weak as a child,--a child! I hate children. Was that it? You tried to push my hands off, as I pressed the pillow on your face, you tried; oh, you tried hard, and I laugh to think of it even now. How I longed to bury my fingers in your throat, but I knew they would leave marks.