My aunt was a singularly quiet, composed woman.

I could not imagine that the loud sobbing and moaning came from her, and I ran down terrified into the kitchen to ask the servants who was crying so violently in my aunt's room.
I found the housemaid and the cook talking together in whispers with serious faces.

They started when they saw me as if I had been a grown-up master who had caught them neglecting their work.
"He's too young to feel it much," I heard one say to the other.

"So far as he is concerned, it seems like a mercy that it happened no later." In a few minutes they had told me the worst.

It was indeed my aunt who had been crying in the bedroom.