Ursula was alarmed by her aunt’s earnest manner. “I can’t swear,” she said in a flurry, “but I’ll promise. I never swore in my life.”
“Swear,” repeated the other woman under her breath; unconsciously she tightened her grasp till Ursula shrieked aloud. “Hush! Are you mad? He’ll hear. Oh, is that it?” She relaxed her hold. “Fool, did you never feel pain?”
“I--I don’t know,” gasped Ursula, now thoroughly frightened, convinced that her aunt must have mad fits of which no one had spoken.
“Swear, I tell you. Say, so help me, God Almighty. Louder. Let me hear it. Now, listen. I’m ill, incurably ill. Never mind what the doctor calls the illness. Enough that he says I can’t live beyond two months. Perhaps he’s mistaken. They often are. Not that I want to live. Not in this agony, my God! Not except for _him_. Ursula, your uncle knows nothing. I don’t want him to know. I’d bear twice as much, if I could, so that he shouldn’t know. Poor fellow, he has his faults, perhaps, but he’s so soft-hearted, he can’t bear to see suffering, not even to hear of it. There, now, I have told you. I’ve never told a living soul, as I said. I can hide it from him, Ursula, if things go on as usual. But I can’t go taking long drives, or to flower-shows, and oh, Ursula, dear, I _can’t_ go out at night.”
Ursula was dumb-struck with horror and pity. Still, she could not help feeling, even at that moment, that her visit to her uncle was becoming hopelessly perplexed. She had expected a round of gayeties, all the delights of a début.
“I’ll do whatever you wish me to,” she said, helplessly. “Oh, aunt, I’m so sorry, but I hope you’ll get better. Father says doctors never know.”
“Not about curing, they don’t,” replied her aunt, grimly. “Now, Ursula, remember, not a word. It’s a secret between you and me. I don’t think it’ll be for very long. Move away; I hear some one coming!”
Harriet entered the room with her novel under her arm. Presently she looked up at Mevrouw Mopius’s deathly countenance lying back as if asleep, and nodded meaningly to Ursula. Mynheer Mopius came in, and his wife sat up. “Jacóbus,” she said, “you were laughing at the blueness of my sky yesterday. I saw one in the exhibition aviary that was every bit as blue.”