A Question of Marriage

thoughts--the blackest thoughts. I had visions of him as a forger, shut up in a cell. When the bell rang late at night I used to tremble, wondering if it were he escaped from prison, coming to us for shelter... Then at the end, as so often happens, it came out just by chance. Some people were sitting behind a screen at a reception, and they spoke of me--just a few words, and before I could move I had heard the great secret. `Interesting-looking girl! It is to be hoped she won't go mad, too. So many of that family--' It was like a flashlight over the past. I looked back, and understood. All the bits fitted, and the mystery was solved. I was not the daughter of a criminal--only of a maniac, who had been shut up for five years before his death. That was my grandmother's mysterious illness, and Aunt Bertha's too--pretty Aunt Bertha, who disappeared for a year at a time, for a `cure,' and came back looking so worn and sad. That was the explanation of my boy cousin's violent temper, and of the misery of his father