you want to confess . . . if you have any secret, tell it to me and not to the sisters."
By now Irene was sobbing hysterically, clinging all the while to the hand of her mother. "There is nothing . . . nothing!" she cried, "I don't know why I am so miserable."
"Then promise me one thing . . . that you will do nothing until we have talked the matter out thoroughly." She fell to stroking the girl's blond hair with her thin veined hand, slowly, with a hypnotic gesture.
"Yes . . . Yes. . . . I promise!" And gradually the sobbing ebbed and the girl became still and calm.
For a time they sat thus listening to the mocking frivolous tick-tick of the little French clock over the fireplace greater sound, rumbling and regular like the pounding of giant hammers they did not hear because it had become so much a part of their lives that it was no longer audible. The throb of the Mills, working day and night, had become a part of the very stillness.
At last Julia Shane stirred and said with a sudden passion, "Come, Irene! . . . Come up to my room. There is no peace here." And the pair rose and hurried away, the mother hobbling along with the aid of her ebony stick, never once glancing behind her at the portrait whose handsome malignant eyes appeared to follow them with a wicked delight.
