Oh! Mary, you cannot think I would do that, whatever I may be." The tears sprang to her eyes at the idea that she was suspected of being one who would help to inform against an old friend. Mary caught her sad and upbraiding look. "No! I know you would not tell, aunt. I don't know what I say, I am so shocked. But say you will not tell. Do." "No, indeed I will not tell, come what may." Mary sat still looking at the writing, and turning the paper round with careful examination, trying to hope, but her very fears belying her hopes. "I thought you cared for the young man that's murdered," observed Esther, half-aloud; but feeling that she could not mistake this strange interest in the suspected murderer, implied by Mary's eagerness to screen him from anything which might strengthen suspicion against him. She had come, desirous to know the extent of Mary's grief for Mr Carson, and glad of the excuse afforded her by the important scrap of paper. Her remark about its being Jem's hand-writing, she had, with this view of ascertaining Mary's state of feeling, felt to be most imprudent the instant after she had uttered it; but Mary's anxiety that she should not tell, was too great, and too decided, to leave a doubt as to her interest for Jem. She grew more and more bewildered, and her dizzy head refused to reason. Mary never spoke.
She held the bit of paper firmly, determined to retain possession of it, come what might; and anxious, and impatient for her aunt to go. As she sat, her face bore a likeness to Esther's dead child. "You are so like my little girl, Mary!" said Esther, weary of the one subject on which she could get no satisfaction, and recurring, with full heart, to the thought of the dead. Mary looked up. Her aunt had children, then. That was all the idea she received. No faint imagination of the love and the woe of that poor creature crossed her mind, or she would have taken her, all guilty and erring, to her bosom, and tried to bind up the broken heart. No! it was not to be.