On her part she never looked towards him, but continued impatiently, “I don’t suppose I thought of the whys and the wherefores. I thought it was you, that was all. And when I found it was Mary--I don’t know whether she dragged me out or I pushed her out. Above all I feared a noise to wake the boy.” John gave her a long searching look. He did not want to find her out. He wanted her to clear herself from all suspicions, from all doubt. “Ah, the boy!” he said, with a long-drawn breath, “the poor boy! Did you wake him? It might have been as much as his life was worth.” “You think of nothing else,” she said. Then with a sort of indulgence to his weakness, “Your boy never stirred.” She breathed forth heavily a sigh--was it of thankfulness? “I suppose he was sleeping,” she added, with a sort of bravado, “I did not look.” “Good God!” cried John, springing up, “was there any doubt? Had you any doubt?” He seized his dressing-gown and thrust his arms into the sleeves, and his feet into slippers. “Aye,” cried Letitia, still without a movement, without even looking at him, “go and see. Nothing would make me face that woman again.” She sat idly playing with a ring upon her finger, turning it round and round, but neither raised her head nor looked at him, though he paused before her with again the searching look of anxiety which he dared not define. “Letitia,” he said, “for God’s sake what do you mean? There is something in all this I don’t understand.” “Ah, don’t I speak plain enough?” she said. “It’s Mary come back, and as mad as a March hare.” “And you left her--a woman--in that state--alone with the boy, just out of the jaws of death? What’s that on your gown?” She looked at it, bending forward to see--a long streak as of something spilt. The stain was stiff, giving a rigid line to the stuff--and what John suspected, feared it to be, cannot be put into words. His eyes grew wild with terror, and his voice hoarse, as he repeated:-- “On your gown? What is it? What is it?” “Oh, the milk!” Letitia said. It brought everything before her, and a shiver ran over her again; but also a laugh, which, though tuneless enough, gave the distracted man by her side some comfort, for she could not have laughed surely if it had been----“We spilt it between us,” Letitia said, “and mad as she was she drew back for that, not to spoil her dress. She had her senses enough for that.” He stood in front of her for a moment, undecided what to do, when she suddenly raised her head and cried sharply, “John, why don’t you go and see?” “I can’t understand you,” he said. “You mean more than I know.” She looked up at him again and laughed in a way that froze his blood. “Don’t I always?” she said, with a tone of contempt. Then added, stamping on the floor, “Go--go and see what has happened. I will never see that woman again.”