The noise explained itself.  Too feeble to walk alone, Beryl had pushed a chair before her, until she reached the door, and now stood grasping it, swaying to and fro, as she endeavored to steady herself.  One hand held at her throat the black shawl, whose loosened folds fell like a mourning mantle to her feet, the other clutched the door, against the edge of which she leaned for support.

“Dyce, I have known for some days that I have no mother in this world.  I have seen her.  Your kind heart dreads giving me pain, but nothing can hurt me now.  I cannot suffer any more, because I am bruised and beaten to numbness.  I want to see you alone; I want to know everything.”

At sight of her, the old woman darted forward and caught the tall, wasted, tottering form in her strong arms.  Lifting her as though she had been a child, she bore her back to her small bleak room, laid her softly on her cot, then knelt down, and burst into a fit of passionate crying.

As if to shut out some torturing vision, Beryl clasped her hands over her eyes, and when she spoke, her voice was very unsteady: 

“Did you see mother alive?”

“Oh, honey, I was too late!  I was three days too late to see her at all.  When I got to New York, and found the Doctor’s house, he was not at home; had just gone to Boston a half hour before I rung the bell.  His folks couldn’t tell me nothin’, so I had to wait two days.  When I give him your note, he looked dreadful cut up, and tole me Miss Ellie had all the care and ‘tention in the world, but nothin’ couldn’t save her.  He said she didn’t suffer much, but was ’lirious all the time, until the day before she died, when all of a sudden her mind cleared.  Then she axed for you, honey—­God bless you, my poor lamb!  I hate to harrify your heart.  The Doctor comforted her all he could, and tole her bizness of importance had done kept you South.  Miss Ellie axed how long she could live; he said only a few hours.  She begged him to prop her up, so she could write a few words.  He says he held the paper for her, and she wrote a little, and rested; and then she wrote a little mere and fell back speechless.  He pat the piece of paper in a invellop and sealed it, and axed her if she wished it given to her daughter Beryl.  She couldn’t talk then, but she looked at him and nodded her head.  That was about four o’clock in the evening of Tuesday.  She had a sort of spasm, and went to sleep.  At two o’clock, she woke up in Heaven.  He said he felt so sorry for you—­dear lamb!  He wouldn’t let them burry her where most was hurried that died in the hospital.  He had her laid away in his own lot in some graveyard, where his childun was burried, ’till he could hear from you.  He tole me, she was tenderly handled, and everything was done as you would have wanted it; and he cut off some of the beautiful hair—­and—­”

Dyce smothered her sobs in the bedclothes, but Beryl lay like a stone image.