Mrs. Cragg was silent.
"I do not gather that she destroyed the letters to-day; but she seems to have come across two or three others unexpectedly, and for some reason to have felt bound to read them. Why should she have thought it right to read these, when she had burnt the others for fear of being persuaded to read them? Are you sure you cannot explain this to me?"
Suspicion was written in Mr. Cragg's face. Pattie had not managed so cleverly as she had intended to manage. Mrs. Cragg took the bull by the horns, which she was capable of doing, as we have already seen.
"It's no such tremendous mystery, after all," she said. "Pattie found that I'd read the letters, and then she said she must read them too."
"You had read the letters!"
"Yes, Mr. Cragg. I had read them! And I'd read them again, if it was all to come over fresh!" Mrs. Cragg tossed her head.
"You read—without leave—letters that did not belong to you? You do not mean it!"
Mrs. Cragg hardened herself against her husband's look.
"Pattie was so ridiculous. Wouldn't tell this, and didn't choose to answer that, and so mysterious! So I just got hold of the letters, and found out for myself. And I'd a right, too. As if we weren't taking her in, and doing for her, all at our own expense—and she, if it wasn't for us, pretty near a beggar! If I hadn't a right, I should like to know who would have! Oh, I'm not ashamed of it! I'd do it over again, this minute. And so I told Pattie."
Cragg was roused for once. He had always been a man of honourable feeling.