When I found that my mother had actually taken this inferior woman
into her confidence in regard to my affairs and told her all about
Winnie and the cross, my dislike of her became intensified, and on
this evening my mother very much vexed me in the drawing-room by
taking the cross from a cabinet and saying to me,
'What is now to be done with this? All along the coast there are such
notions about its value that to replace it in the tomb would be
simple madness.' I made no reply. 'Indeed,' she continued, looking at
the amulet as she might have looked at a cobra uprearing its head to
spring at her, 'it must really be priceless. And to think that all
this was to be buried in the coffin of--! It is your charge,
however, and not mine.'
'Yes, mother,' I said, 'it is my charge;' and taking up the cross I
wrapped it in my handkerchief.
'Take the amulet and guard it well,' she said, as I placed it
carefully in the breast pocket of my coat.
'And remember,' said my aunt, breaking into the conversation, 'that
the true curses of the Aylwins are and always have been superstition
and love-madness.
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