Going in one morning to Helen she found her walking to and fro as she often walked of late, with hurried steps and excited face as if driven by some power beyond her control.

“Good morning, dear.  I’m so sorry you had a restless night, and wish you had sent for me.  Will you come out now for an early drive?  It’s a lovely day, and your mother thinks it would do you good,” began Christie, troubled by the state in which she found the girl.

But as she spoke Helen turned on her, crying passionately: 

“My mother! don’t speak of her to me, I hate her!”

“Oh, Helen, don’t say that.  Forgive and forget if she has displeased you, and don’t exhaust yourself by brooding over it.  Come, dear, and let us soothe ourselves with a little music.  I want to hear that new song again, though I can never hope to sing it as you do.”

“Sing!” echoed Helen, with a shrill laugh, “you don’t know what you ask.  Could you sing when your heart was heavy with the knowledge of a sin about to be committed by those nearest to you?  Don’t try to quiet me, I must talk whether you listen or not; I shall go frantic if I don’t tell some one; all the world will know it soon.  Sit down, I’ll not hurt you, but don’t thwart me or you’ll be sorry for it.”

Speaking with a vehemence that left her breathless, Helen thrust Christie down upon a seat, and went on with an expression in her face that bereft the listener of power to move or speak.

“Harry has just told me of it; he was very angry, and I saw it, and made him tell me.  Poor boy, he can keep nothing from me.  I’ve been dreading it, and now it’s coming.  You don’t know it, then?  Young Butler is in love with Bella, and no one has prevented it.  Think how wicked when such a curse is on us all.”

The question, “What curse?” rose involuntarily to Christie’s lips, but did not pass them, for, as if she read the thought, Helen answered it in a whisper that made the blood tingle in the other’s veins, so full of ominous suggestion was it.

“The curse of insanity I mean.  We are all mad, or shall be; we come of a mad race, and for years we have gone recklessly on bequeathing this awful inheritance to our descendants.  It should end with us, we are the last; none of us should marry; none dare think of it but Bella, and she knows nothing.  She must be told, she must be kept from the sin of deceiving her lover, the agony of seeing her children become what I am, and what we all may be.”

Here Helen wrung her hands and paced the room in such a paroxysm of impotent despair that Christie sat bewildered and aghast, wondering if this were true, or but the fancy of a troubled brain.  Mrs. Carrol’s face and manner returned to her with sudden vividness, so did Augustine’s gloomy expression, and the strange wish uttered over his sleeping sister long ago.  Harry’s reckless, aimless life might be explained in this way; and all that had perplexed her through that year.  Every thing confirmed the belief that this tragical assertion was true, and Christie covered up her face, murmuring, with an involuntary shiver: