“Don’t, Hannah, oh, don’t—­you will kill her.”

“I will at least speak the truth.”

In the morning she had a cruel report to bear to the mother, and she braced herself for the trial.  When she returned from her mission, Hester was waiting, pale and trembling, in the hall.  She whispered: 

“Oh, how did she take it—­that poor, desolate mother?”

Hannah’s eyes were swimming in tears.  She said: 

“God forgive me, I told her the child was well!”

Hester gathered her to her heart, with a grateful “God bless you, Hannah!” and poured out her thankfulness in an inundation of worshiping praises.

After that, the two knew the limit of their strength, and accepted their fate.  They surrendered humbly, and abandoned themselves to the hard requirements of the situation.  Daily they told the morning lie, and confessed their sin in prayer; not asking forgiveness, as not being worthy of it, but only wishing to make record that they realized their wickedness and were not desiring to hide it or excuse it.

Daily, as the fair young idol of the house sank lower and lower, the sorrowful old aunts painted her glowing bloom and her fresh young beauty to the wan mother, and winced under the stabs her ecstasies of joy and gratitude gave them.

In the first days, while the child had strength to hold a pencil, she wrote fond little love-notes to her mother, in which she concealed her illness; and these the mother read and reread through happy eyes wet with thankful tears, and kissed them over and over again, and treasured them as precious things under her pillow.

Then came a day when the strength was gone from the hand, and the mind wandered, and the tongue babbled pathetic incoherences. this was a sore dilemma for the poor aunts.  There were no love-notes for the mother.  They did not know what to do.  Hester began a carefully studied and plausible explanation, but lost the track of it and grew confused; suspicion began to show in the mother’s face, then alarm.  Hester saw it, recognized the imminence of the danger, and descended to the emergency, pulling herself resolutely together and plucking victor from the open jaws of defeat.  In a placid and convincing voice she said: 

“I thought it might distress you to know it, but Helen spent the night at the Sloanes’.  There was a little party there, and, although she did not want to go, and you so sick, we persuaded her, she being young and needing the innocent pastimes of youth, and we believing you would approve.  Be sure she will write the moment she comes.”

“How good you are, and how dear and thoughtful for us both!  Approve?  Why, I thank you with all my heart.  My poor little exile!  Tell her I want her to have every pleasure she can—­I would not rob her of one.  Only let her keep her health, that is all I ask.  Don’t let that suffer; I could not bear it.  How thankful I am that she escaped this infection—­and what a narrow risk she ran, Aunt Hester!  Think of that lovely face all dulled and burned with fever.  I can’t bear the thought of it.  Keep her health.  Keep her bloom!  I can see her now, the dainty creature—­with the big, blue, earnest eyes; and sweet, oh, so sweet and gentle and winning!  Is she as beautiful as ever, dear Aunt Hester?”