They raised the latch and went in. No one was in the lower room; so they passed through, and ascended a low, narrow staircase, almost like a ladder, which rose abruptly from a doorway at the farther side, until they reached another door which stood facing them, without any landing between it and the highest step. Gabrielle knocked, and a faint voice from within answered—“Come in;” and she entered, followed by her sister. It was a very small room, and very bare of furniture; for there was little in it but a deal bedstead, an old table, and one or two odd ricketty chairs, in one of which—that boasted of a pair of broken arms, and something that had once been a cushion—sat the woman they had come to visit.
Gabrielle went quickly up to her, and taking her hand said in a low voice—
“I have brought my sister, as I promised—my eldest sister.”
The woman bowed her head without speaking then tried to rise from her seat, but she seemed very weak, and her hand trembled as she leaned on the arm of her chair.
“Do not rise, my good woman,” Miss Vaux said kindly; and her voice sounded almost soft—she was so used to attune it so as to be in harmony with a sick chamber—“do not rise; I see you are very weak,” and she drew a chair near, and sat down by her side
“You have come quite lately to the village, my sister tells me.”
“Quite lately, less than a week ago,” was the answer; but spoken in so low a voice that the words were scarcely audible.
“Were you ever here before? Have you any connection with the place?” Miss Vaux asked.
“But you had probably some motive in coming here? Have you no relations or friends?”
“No, no,” the woman cried, suddenly bursting into tears, “I have no friends, no friends in the wide world.”
A gentle hand was laid on her shoulder; a gentle voice whispered some soft words in her ear, and the woman looked up into Gabrielle’s dark eyes, and murmured something between her sobs. Then they were all silent for a few moments.
“I think you are a widow,” Miss Vaux asked gently, when she had become calmer.
“Yes,” she answered slowly, as though the word had been dragged from her, so much it seemed to pain her to speak it.
A moment’s pause, and then another “yes,” hardly intelligible from the choking sob which accompanied it.