"No, Mrs. Williams, I question you. Pray be perfectly frank with me. You must see I have a motive in asking you these questions. I have faith in your judgment, and I am anxious to hear your opinion of Mrs. Thorburn." Her fingers worked nervously, and something like an expression of distress entered her face. She remained silent. I looked through the window; Geraldine was gone. "Mrs. Williams, I am going to ask you a question. The fact of my asking it will convince you of the high opinion I have of your character and how much I appreciate your conduct since you have been in my service. It will imply also the confidence I possess in your truth and secrecy--in your truth to give me an honest downright answer, and in your secrecy to conceal whatever discovery you may make. Do you think my wife sane?" The answer came reluctantly: "No, Sir." "What makes you doubt her sanity?" "Her manners, Sir, and her behaviour, and sometimes a look she has in her eyes; but her conversation, principally." "Have you had any experience of mad people?" "Yes, Sir. Father once took charge of a niece of his that was mad." "What form did her madness take?" "She was very cunning. Her mind was full of crazy thoughts; but she seemed to know that if she spoke them she would be thought mad. But she couldn't always hide them. And she was very artful. She would steal things and hide them so that nobody could find them. She was taken worse after she had been with us a year, and we had to send her to an asylum over at Barnstock, where she died raving." "You would be more likely, after such an experience, to know madness when you saw it than I?" "Yes, Sir." "And do you seriously and truly think Mrs. Thorburn mad?" "You ask me, Sir--it's painful to say--but I would swear there is madness in her." "When did you make the discovery?" "I didn't make it suddenly. I had my suspicions after she had been in the house two or three days. But I became sure when, not long after she had been here, she came to me and told me she had seen a shadow in the air of a hand holding a knife." "She told you this?" I exclaimed, with a start. "Yes, Sir. She spoke in a whisper, looking around her, like one who tells a great secret. Her eyes were all alight, but her cheeks were pale. She told me not to tell you." "And you kept your promise?" I said, bitterly. "Why did you not tell me?" "I hadn't the heart, Sir. I saw how you loved her--how you loved each other--and I couldn't speak. Besides, I thought it might be some wild notion she had brought away with her from her home. She led a dull life, and I guessed all sorts of strange fancies might have taken her in her loneliness. And to speak the truth, Sir, though I feared that her mind was not right, I thought your company would bring her back to herself." "And do you think she has improved?" "I am afraid not, Sir." "What am I to do, Mrs. Williams? how do you advise me to act?"