"Have done, Millicent! I confess now that it is you. I recognise your voice. But do not stir up old memories. They haunted me like ghosts for more than twenty years. It is only recently that I have been able to lay them.... Let them lie. You weighed me down with misery enough when last we met. Do not refer to it. I had rather we had not met now. It is like reopening a grave, even to hear you speak. It brings back all I would forget--all I have been cheating myself into believing that I had buried and got rid of at last." "I can understand the feeling." "What can I do to serve you? Tell me; but let us part at once. I will do anything, but I cannot stand here listening. Your voice is heavy with memories like forebodings; my heart sinks at the very sound. Speak, and let me leave you. What do you want?" "I want nothing, Joseph--nothing for myself. It is for your own sake I am come, and it tears my heart to say the things I have to tell you." "You said something like that when you acted so cruelly before, you and your mother; but you did not spare me." "I am come to warn you, Joseph, against this marriage you propose to make." "You are? Have you not injured me enough in my affections already? Are five-and-twenty years of widowhood not enough to have inflicted on one who never knowingly offended you? What wrong have I done you, that you should persecute me like this?" "Joseph, I always loved you like a sister. It crushes me to be made the herald of your disappointments; but I have no choice." "I will not listen to you. You shall not put me from Rose as you did from Lina. Let me pass." "You cannot marry Rose. You must stop and hear me;" and she planted herself between him and the door. "Then I must escape by the window; and there she is, standing at the farther end of the gallery. How spirited and sweet she looks--how like our Lina!... Millicent, you will pity, and not come in between? Look, she sees us! She starts. She is coming to us with that pretty shyness which seems half defiance. One would think she knew you well, Millicent?" "She does, Joseph. Listen to her when we meet; it will save a world of painful explanation." Rose came forward, not very quickly, though pride forbade her faltering. She held her head erect, and her colour was heightened; but her eyes were far from steady, and for all her endeavours to outface the situation, betrayed an inclination to seek the ground. "You here, Aunt Millicent? I did not know that you and Mr Naylor were acquainted." "_Aunt_ Millicent? Are you two related, then?" gasped Joseph, his nether jaw falling. "She is your own daughter, Joseph Naylor! It was to tell you so that I sought you out--to preserve you from the hideous mistake you were about to make. But oh! it breaks my heart that I should be your messenger of evil tidings again." Joseph leant against the window-jamb, looking very pale, and uttering a sigh so deep that it sounded like a moan.