The room reeled before her eyes, and she made an ineffectual clutch at a chair. Through a sort of thick fog she heard the official repeating in a low tone: “It was the man known as Leslie Morrison.” Then she felt herself fall. Her mother was with her when she recovered consciousness, and the woman who had attended to her before, and whom Mrs. Palmer now repeatedly and volubly addressed as “Matron.” Elsie looked round her, but the officials were gone. With a groan she let her head drop backwards again on to the rail of the chair in which she found herself. “Come along now, don’t give way. You’re better now,” said the matron briskly. “Don’t let yourself go, Mrs. Williams.” “Oh, Elsie, Elsie,” wailed Mrs. Palmer, “whatever will become of us? Didn’t I always tell you----” “Give her an arm, Mrs. Palmer, and I’ll take her on the other side, and we’ll get her into the other room. There’s a nice couch there, and she can lie down a bit.” They half led, half dragged Elsie away, the matron exhorting her all the time with impersonal, professional brightness to pull herself together. She was conscious of thankfulness when the woman left her alone with her mother, although leaving the door open behind her. Mrs. Palmer instantly bent forward and asked with avidity: “What did you say to them, Elsie?” “Let me alone, Mother, for pity’s sake!” “How can I let you alone, as you call it, you unnatural girl? What a way to speak to your own mother, on whom you’re bringing sorrow and shame, and may bring worse yet, if you’re not careful! Now you tell me this, Elsie Williams, directly this minute: Did you or did you not tell them that you and Horace were on bad terms together?” “I said we were quite happy together----” “Stick to that,” said Mrs. Palmer significantly. “Did anyone know--any neighbour or anybody--that you quarrelled? He never made a row, or knocked you about, did he?” “Only the once,” Elsie said automatically. She pushed up her sleeve, then shuddered violently as she recalled that she had last made use of that same gesture in the tea-shop with Morrison. “My goodness, did Horace do that? You must have tried him pretty high, _I_ know. How are you going to account for that bruise, young Elsie?” “Who’s to know about it?” “Oh, they’ll find out fast enough! They get to know about everything. Look here, did you say that you’d been pushed against the wall by whoever it was who did in poor Horace?” Elsie nodded, too much stunned even to wonder how her mother had become possessed of this information. “Very well, then. Those bruises on your arm are where you fell against that wall. Don’t forget. I shall say you showed them to me, and told me about it.” “Say what--when?” Elsie asked stupidly. “I suppose all this’ll be over before I’m quite mad, and they’ll let me go home to-day.” Her mother’s fat face puckered up suddenly, and she began to cry with loud, gulping sobs. “I don’t know!” she wailed. “I don’t know.”