She always looked very sad , spoke in a low sweet voice , and was my childish ideal of all that was high-bred and graceful . I had many beloved haunts at the Grange , but I liked the garret best . It was a roomy old place , big enough to have comfortably housed a family in itself , and was filled with cast-off furniture and old trunks and boxes of discarded finery . I was never tired of playing there , dressing up in the old-fashioned gowns and hats and practising old-time dance steps before the high , cracked mirror that hung at one end . That old garret was a veritable fairyland to me . There was one old chest which I could not explore and , like all forbidden things , it possessed a great attraction for me . It stood away back in a dusty , cobwebbed corner , a strong , high wooden box , painted blue . From some words which I had heard Grandmother let fall I was sure it had a history ; it was the one thing she never explored in her periodical overhaulings . When I grew tired of playing I liked to creep up on it and sit there , picturing out my own fancies concerning it -- of which my favourite one was that some day I should solve the riddle and open the chest to find it full of gold and jewels with which I might restore the fortune of the Laurances and all the traditionary splendours of the old Grange . I was sitting there one day when Aunt Winnifred and Grandmother Laurance came up the narrow dark staircase , the latter jingling her keys and peering into the dusty corners as she came along the room . When they came to the old chest , Grandmother rapped the top smartly with her keys . `` I wonder what is in this old chest , '' she said . `` I believe it really should be opened . The moths may have got into it through that crack in the lid . '' `` Why do n't you open it , Mother ? '' said Mrs. DeLisle . `` I am sure that key of Robert 's would fit the lock . '' `` No , '' said Grandmother in the tone that nobody , not even Aunt Winnifred , ever dreamed of disputing . `` I will not open that chest without Eliza 's permission . She confided it to my care when she went away , and I promised that it should never be opened until she came for it . ''
`` Poor Eliza , '' XXXXX Mrs. DeLisle thoughtfully .
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