that henceforth I draw my own rents, I receive my own dividends, I
pay my own bills, I keep my own banking account. And to-morrow or
the next day I set out for Woodbury."

The Inspector turned to Aunt Emma with a demonstrative smile.

"There, you see for. yourself," he said, well pleased, "what this
interview has done for her!"

But Aunt Emma only drew back, wrung her hands again in impotent
despair, and stared at him blankly like a wounded creature.

The Inspector took up his hat to leave. I followed him out to the
door, and shook hands with him cordially. The burden felt lighter on
my shoulders already. For four long years that mystery had haunted
me day and night, as a thing impenetrable, incomprehensible, not
even to be inquired about. The mere sense that I might now begin to
ask what it meant seemed to make it immediately less awful and less
burdensome to me.

When I returned to the drawing-room, Aunt Emma sat there on the
sofa, crying silently, the very picture of misery.

"Una," she said, without even raising her eyes to mine, "the man may
have done as he says: he may have restored you your mind again; but
what's that to me? He's lost me my child, my darling, my daughter!"

I stooped down and kissed her. Dear, tender-hearted auntie! she had
always been very good to me. But I knew I was right, for all that,
in becoming a woman,--in asserting my years, my independence, my