She found her way to the garret, whose low, wide window, full of little panes of heavy greenish glass, looked over the tree-tops towards the western sky, still faintly yellow with sunset light, and barred by long films of gray cloud.

She knelt down and laid her cheek against the sill, which was notched and whittled by childish hands; for this had been a play-room once, and many a rainy afternoon she and Helen and Gifford had spent here, masquerading in the queer dresses and bonnets packed away in the green chests ranged against the wall, or swinging madly in the little swing which hung from the bare rafters, until the bunches of southernwood and sweet-marjoram and the festoons of dried apples shook on their nails.

She looked at the stars and hearts carved on the sill, and a big "Gifford" hacked into the wood, and she followed the letters absently with her finger.
"He blames me," she said to herself; "he sees the truth of it.

How shall I make up for it?
What can I do ?" She stayed by the window until the clouds turned black in the west; down in the heavy darkness of the garden the crickets began their monotonous z-z-ing, and in the locust-trees the katydids answered each other with a sharp, shrill cry.

Then she crept down-stairs and sat outside of Mrs.
Forsythe's room, that she might hear the slightest sound, or note the flicker of the night-lamp burning dimly on the stand at the bedside.
Gifford, sitting in another sick-room, was suffering with her, and blaming himself, in spite of principle.
Mr.Denner lay in his big bed in the middle of the library.