The housekeeper shivered a little. “We found her lying on her bed, poor dear! with her eyes staring, the bedclothes clenched in her hands as if she had tried to cover her face. Oh, Mrs. Asquith! I thought the child was dead.” She stopped with a half sob. “And the half of the French window wide open--it’s not a sash window in that room--standing wide open, showing how it had come in.” “How what had come in?” said Mary huskily, scarcely able to command her voice. “How can I tell? Some wild creature out of the woods--some of the animals that had got loose about the farm.” “Was there any trace of an animal? There must have been some trace!” “Or it might,” said the housekeeper with a sob, the strong excitement of the moment gaining upon her, “have been a tramp that had hidden about the place.” Mary pushed her chair from the table, and covered her face with her hands. But it was only for a moment. She came back to herself, and to the examination of these unwilling witnesses, before they could draw breath, but not before a low indignant outcry, “No, no!” had burst from the young doctor’s lips. She turned upon him with the speed of lightning. “Mr. Darrell!” she cried, “was it a tramp that got into my child’s room in the middle of the night? Speak the truth before God!” What did she suspect or fear? The question flashed through his mind with a shock of strange sensation. “No,” he said, looking at her, “it was no tramp.” “And you know who it was?” She rose up and confronted him with her pale, set face, holding him with her eyes, which were like Hetty’s eyes, in the strain of the horrible gaze that had settled in them that night. He was helpless in her hands like a child. “Yes,” he said, “I know.” She could not speak, but she made him an imperative gesture to go on. He was no longer the unwilling witness, he was the conscious criminal at the bar. “Mrs. Asquith,” he said, with a shiver of nervous emotion, “it needs a long explanation. I would have to tell you many things to make you understand.” “Many things which you have no right to tell any one, Mr. Darrell,” the housekeeper said. Mary once more insisted with an imperious wave of her hand. The young man made a nervous pause. “I have an--invalid gentleman under my charge,” he said. “Mr. Darrell!” cried the housekeeper again, “do you remember all you’ve promised? You’ve no right to go against them that support you, them that pay you.” “What is that to me?” cried Mary quickly. “What do I want with your secrets? Tell me about my child!” “I will tell you everything,” he said. “It has been against my conscience always. I’ll have this burden no longer. He wanders about at night, we can’t help it, he slips from our hands. And I suppose he saw the open window. I--I was too late to keep him back. I found him there. He thought she was his child, whom he thinks he has lost. When I heard her scream I knew how it was, and I got him away.”