'She probably bought them,' said Miss Montressor, 'from the other man, and very likely paid him ten times as much as he paid to Eph. That's the way people who have lots of money get done. I don't see any beauty in the pin; and you must understand, Bess,' she continued, assuming a sudden air of very amusing propriety, 'that it was not as a present--at least not deliberate and intentional--I came by the pin. I just could not manage to keep my shawl on with a stupid little pin I had in it, and Mr. Foster took this one out of his scarf, and lent it to me. I never thought more of it till I found it in my shawl here at New York.' Mrs. Jenkins let the subject drop. She had so nearly erred from her strict fidelity to Eph's directions, that the sooner she put herself out of reach of a similar danger the safer she felt. 'Well, it don't matter,' she said. 'It will be many a long day before Mrs. Griswold will have any thought of such things again. She kept up wonderfully yesterday, when you and Mr. Carey were here, and even till after the doctor had seen her, but she must have suffered horribly when she shut herself up in her own room, for when it got quite dark, and she hadn't rung her bell, or made no sign, Justine and I got frightened, and we consulted as to what we had better do about going into the room without she had rung her bell; but, at last, I made up my mind I could not bear it any longer, and I took the baby and went in. She was lying all her length on the hearth-rug, with her face hidden in her hair and her hands; not insensible, she was in a kind of stupid despair. She let us lift her up like a log, and she never spoke one word, not even when I brought the baby to her. She just took her little hand up listlessly in hers for a minute, and let it drop.' In the fulness of her heart, Mrs. Jenkins's homely manner gained a certain dignity of refinement, which acted immediately upon the sensitive nerves of her sister, whose tears fell silently, and who saw with her mental vision the scene her sister's words represented. 'And then we got her into bed, and sent for the doctor. He gave her a sleeping draught, and said she was to be watched. Justine wanted to sit up with her, but I would not let her--she is young, and young people are never wakeful--so I stayed and sat until this morning, just outside the curtain, peeping at her through a little chink where it joined the tester; and through the chink I could see her eyes wide open, quite unchanged all through the hours of night. I suppose it was the medicine that kept her so still, for she neither sighed, moaned, spoke, nor stirred. She might have been a dead woman, with only the eyes alive, until after the sun rose, and then she began to shiver. I put an eider-down over her, and in a few minutes she dropped asleep. I suppose it was the medicine had its own way at last, and there she is now.'