Was Owen right in drawing these conclusions?--or was he purposely giving a wrong colouring to facts, and seeking craftily to throw suspicion off himself? It was a nice question, one I could make neither top nor tail of. But, looking back to the fatal evening, weighing this point, sifting that, I began to see that Matilda showed more anxiety, more terror, than she need have shown _before_ she knew that any ill had happened. Had she a prevision, as she stood at the door with the jug of ale in her hand, that some evil might have chanced? Did she leave some individual in the house with Jane Cross when she went to the Swan to get the ale?--and was it her brother? Did she leave OWEN in the house, and was she screening him? * * * * * "Why, Matilda! Is it you?" It was fourteen months later, and autumn weather, and I had just arrived in London at Miss Deveen's. My question to Matilda, who came into my dressing-room with some warm water to wash off the travelling dust, was not made in surprise at seeing _her_, for I supposed she was still in service at Miss Deveen's, but at seeing the change in her. Instead of the healthy and, so to say, handsome girl known at Saltwater, I saw a worn, weary, anxious-looking shadow, with a feverish fire in her wild dark eyes. "Have you been ill, Matilda?" "No, sir, not at all. I am quite well." "You have grown very thin." "It's the London air, sir. I think everybody must get thin who lives in it." Very civilly and respectfully, but yet with an unmistakable air of reticence, spoke she. Somehow the girl was changed, and greatly changed. Perhaps she had been grieving after Jane Cross? Perhaps the secret of what had happened (if in truth Matilda knew it) lay upon her with too heavy a weight? "Do you find Matilda a good servant?" I asked of Miss Deveen, later, she and I being alone together. "A very good servant, Johnny. But she is going to leave me." "Is she? Why?" Miss Deveen only nodded, in answer to the first query, passing over the last. I supposed she did not wish to say. "I think her so much altered." "In what way, Johnny?" "In looks: looks and manner. She is just a shadow. One might say she had passed through a six months' fever. And what a curious light there is in her eyes!" "She has always impressed me with the idea of having some great care upon her. None can mistake that she is a sorrowful woman. I hear that the other servants accuse her of having been 'crossed in love,'" added Miss Deveen, with a smile. "She is thinner even than Miss Cattledon." "And that, I daresay you think, need not be, Johnny! Miss Cattledon, by the way, is rather hard upon Matilda just now: calls her a 'demon.'" "A demon! Why does she?"