Sylvia turned on her.  “Have you got money?” said she.  “I thought you were poor.”

“Yes, I think I have a great deal of money.  I don’t know how much.  My lawyers take care of it, and there is a trustee, who is very kind.  He is a lawyer, too.  He was a friend of poor Cousin Eliza’s.  His name is McAllister.  He lives in Chicago, but he comes to New York quite often.  He is quite an old gentleman, but very nice indeed.  Oh yes, I have plenty of money.  I always have had ever since mamma died—­at least, since a short time after.  But we were very poor, I think, after papa died.  I think we must have been.  I was only a little girl when mamma died, but I seem to remember living in a very little, shabby place in New York—­very little and shabby—­and I seem to remember a great deal of noise.  Sometimes I wonder if we could have lived beside the elevated road.  It does not seem possible that we could have been as poor as that, but sometimes I do wonder.  And I seem to remember a close smell about our rooms, and that they were very hot, and I remember when poor mamma died, although I was so young.  I remember a great many people, who seemed very kind, came in, and after that I was in a place with a good many other little girls.  I suppose it was a school.  And then—­” Rose stopped and turned white, and a look of horror came over her face.

“What then?” asked Sylvia.  “Don’t you feel well, child?”

“Yes, I feel well—­as well as I ever feel when I almost remember something terrible and never quite do.  Oh, I hope I never shall quite remember.  I think I should die if I did.”

Sylvia stared at her.  Rose’s face was fairly convulsed.  Sylvia rose and hesitated a moment, then she stepped close to the girl and pulled the fair head to her lean shoulder.  “Don’t; you mustn’t take on so,” she said.  “Don’t try to remember anything if it makes you feel like that.  You’ll be down sick.”

“I am trying not to remember, and always the awful dread lest I shall comes over me,” sobbed the girl.  “Mr. McAllister says not to try to remember, too, but I am so horribly afraid that I shall try in spite of me.  Mrs. Wilton and Miss Pamela don’t know anything about it.  I never said anything about it to them.  I did once to Mr. McAllister, and I did to Cousin Eliza, and she said not to try, and now I am telling you, I suppose because you are related to me.  It came over me all of a sudden.”

Rose sobbed again.  Sylvia smoothed her hair, then she shook her by the slender, soft shoulders, and again that overpowering delight seized her.  “Come, now,” she said, “don’t you cry another minute.  You get up and lay your underclothes away in the bureau drawers.  It’s almost time to get supper, and I can’t spend much more time here.”

Rose obeyed.  She packed away piles of laced and embroidered things in the bureau drawers, and under Sylvia’s directions hung up her gowns in the closet.  As she did this she volunteered further information.