it--I'm sure of it!"

Jane stopped with me and soothed me. She was certainly very kind.
Yet I felt in a dim underhand sort of way it was treason to Aunt
Emma to receive her caresses at all after what she had said to me.
Though to be sure, it was I, not she, who spoke those hateful words.
It was I myself who had said the hand was Aunt Emma's.

As I lay awake and thought, the idea flashed across me suddenly,
could Jane have any grudge of her own against Aunt Emma? Was this a
deliberate plot? What did she mean by her warnings that I should
keep my mind open? Why had she said from the very first it was a
woman's hand? Did she want to set me against my aunt? And was Dr.
Marten in league with her? In my tortured frame of mind, I felt all
alone in the world. I covered my head and sobbed in my misery. I
didn't know who were my friends and who were against me.

At last, after long watching, I dozed off into an uneasy sleep. Jane
had already been snoring long beside me. I woke up again with a
start. I was cold and shuddering. I had dreamed once more the same
Australian dream. My mamma as before stood gentle beside me. She
stooped down and smoothed my hair: I could see her face and her form
distinctly. And I noticed now she was like her sister, Aunt Emma,
only younger and prettier, and ever so much slighter. And her hand,
too, was soft and white like auntie's--very gentle and delicate.

It was just there that I woke up--with the hand before my eyes. Oh,
how vividly I noted it! Aunt Emma's hand, only younger, and
unscarred on the palm. The family hand, no doubt: the hand of the
Moores. I remembered, now, that Aunt Emma had spoken more than once