"Know what?--what has happened?--he's been and killed himself? Oh, miss, don't you go for to say so!" cried Mrs Smith, in natural dismay and terror. "No," cried Nettie, with a long sigh that relieved her breast, "not so bad as that, thank Heaven; but hush, hush! I cannot go and tell Susan just yet--not just yet. Oh, give me a moment to get breath! For he is dead! I tell you, _hush_!" cried Nettie, seizing the woman's hand, and wringing it, in the extremity of her terror for alarming Susan. "Don't you understand me? She is a widow, and she does not know--her husband is dead, and she does not know. Have you no pity for her in your own heart?" "Lord ha' mercy! but wait till I call Smith," cried the alarmed landlady, shrinking, yet eager to know the horribly interesting details of that tragedy. She ran breathless up-stairs on that errand, while Nettie went back to the door of the parlour, resolutely locked it, and took away the key. "Nobody shall go gazing and talking over him, and making a wonder of poor Fred," said Nettie to herself, shaking off from her long eyelashes the tear which came out of the compunction of her heart. "Poor Fred!" She sat down on one of the chairs of the little hall beside that closed door. The children and their mother up-stairs still slept unsuspicious; and their young guardian, with a world of thoughts rising in her mind, sat still and pondered. The past was suddenly cut off from the future by this dreadful unthought-of event. She had come to a dead pause in that life, which to every spectator was so strangely out of accordance with her youth, but which was to herself such simple and plain necessity as to permit no questioning. She was brought suddenly to a standstill at this terrible moment, and sat turning her dauntless little face to the new trial before her, pale, but undismayed. Nettie did not deceive herself even in her thoughts. She saw, with the intuitive foresight of a keen observer, her sister's violent momentary grief, her indolent acceptance of the position after a while, the selfish reserve of repining and discontent which Susan would establish in the memory of poor Fred: she saw how, with fuller certainty than ever, because now more naturally, she herself, her mind, her laborious hands, her little fortune, would belong to the fatherless family. She did not sigh over the prospect, or falter; but she exercised no self-delusion on the subject. There was nobody but she to do it--nobody but she, in her tender maidenhood, to manage all the vulgar tragical business which must, this very day, confirm to the knowledge of the little surrounding world the event which had happened--nobody but herself to tell the tale to the widow, to bear all the burdens of the time. Nettie did not think over these particulars with self-pity, or wonder over her hard lot. She did not imagine herself to have chosen this lot at all. There was nobody else to do it--that was the simple secret of her strength.