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,