" The girl repeated the words after her, slowly, as
if trying to grasp their full meaning as she uttered them. Then a sudden
terror leaped into her eyes, and she cried shudderingly: "Oh, how strange
it is!"
"You do not doubt it? You do not doubt it still?" exclaimed Miss
Ludington, in anguished tones.
"No, no!" said the girl, recovering herself with an evident effort. "I
cannot doubt it. I do not," and she threw her aims about Miss Ludington's
neck in an embrace in which, nevertheless, a subtle shrinking still
mingled with the impulse of tenderness which had overcome it.
When presently Miss Ludington and Ida went upstairs together, the latter,
with eager, unhesitating step, led the way through a complexity of
roundabout passages, and past many other doors, to that of the chamber
which had been the common possession of the girl and the woman. Miss
Ludington followed her, wondering, yet not wondering.
"It seems so strange to see you so familiar with this house," she said,
with a little hysterical laugh, "and yet, of course, I know it is not
strange.
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