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All I ask is that some day when you are married and happy, dear you will remove from this desolate spot the poor remains of her who of her who " Sobs choked Aunt Jane's utterance. "Jane " began Miss Higglesby-Browne. "I was speaking to my niece," replied Aunt Jane with unutterable dignity from her corner.
Yes, she talked about her Emancipation and her Soul-force and her Individuality, prattling away like a child that has learned its lesson well. "Mercy, aunty, what long words!" I cried gaily, sitting down beside her and patting her hand. Usually I can do anything with her when I pet her up a bit. But the eye of Miss Higglesby-Browne was on her and Aunt Jane actually drew a little away.
And so at last he wandered into the London hospital where he died. And to me the wildest feature of the whole wild tale was that at the last he should have parted with the cherished secret of a lifetime to Miss Higglesby-Browne. In a general way, every one of us knew this history. Even I had had an outline of it from Cuthbert Vane. But so far nobody had seen the map.
Tubbs's situation was, to say the least, awkward. He had risked all, and lost it. But he maintained an air of jaunty self-confidence, slightly tinged with irony. It was all very well, he seemed to imply, for us to try to get along without H. H. We would discover the impossibility of it soon enough. Aunt Jane, drooping, had been led away to the cabin by Miss Higglesby-Browne.
So, in the twinkling of an eye, Miss Higglesby-Browne, fallen forever from her high estate, was strewn in metaphorical fragments at our feet. I turned away, feeling it time to draw the veil of charity upon the scene. Not so Slinker. He looked about him carefully on the ground. "Lady drop anything?" he inquired solicitously.
She replied only by a slight gobbling in her throat, but the other woman spoke in a loud voice, addressed not to me but to the universe in general. "The Young Person is mad!" It was an unmistakably British intonation. This then was Miss Violet Higglesby-Browne, I saw a grim, bony, stocky shape, in a companion costume to my aunt's.
The poor little woman was crying, of course, making a low inarticulate whimper like a frightened child. Miss Higglesby-Browne seemed to have petrified. Her skin had a withered look, and a fine network of lines showed on it, suddenly clear, like a tracery on parchment. Beyond her I saw the face of Dugald Shaw, gray with a steely wrath.
The grim and bony one had made hay while the sun shone while I was idling in California, and those criminally supine cousins were allowing Aunt Jane to run about New York at her own wild will. Miss Higglesby-Browne had her own collar and tag on Aunt Jane now, while she, so complete was her perversion, fairly hugged her slavery and called it freedom.
Manfully Miss Higglesby-Browne stormed up and down the beach. She demanded of Mr. Shaw, of Cuthbert Vane, of Captain Magnus, each and severally, that Mr. Tubbs be compelled to disgorge his secret. You saw that she would not have shrunk from a regimen of racks and thumbscrews. But there were no racks or thumbscrews on the island.
Evidently she had been living over her wrongs. "Yes but how different!" I interrupted hastily. "There were the cousins of course I have to spare you sometimes to the rest of the family!" Aunt Jane is strong on family feeling, and frequently reproaches me with my lack of it. But in expecting Aunt Jane to soften at this I reckoned without Miss Higglesby-Browne.
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