One mastering thought gave Alison's feet wings as she neared the Potterrow on her return from the Wabster's Close. She would tell Nancy of this heart-moving, this pitiful, sad scene she had witnessed, and make it plain to her at whose door the greater guilt of it all lay. Then Nancy must see reason, must lift the veil from her eyes, acknowledge the wrong-doing of the man who could cause suffering so infinite, and see her own danger in submitting to his influence. Alison, in spite of much recently-acquired experience, was still, as the perspicacious reader will perceive, very simple.
Nancy was sitting writing when her messenger returned.
'Well, child,' she said, 'and did you find the wench and deliver our friend's bounty?'
'Bounty!' cried Alison, throwing out her hands. 'She—she needs no bounty, Nancy. She's dead!'
Nancy started, then tapped her foot upon the floor impatiently.
'La, child,' she exclaimed, pettishly, 'how you frighten one!'
But Alison was in no mood to be put off with petulance or callousness. In quick words, faltering and broken—for her eyes were wet, and her quiet, reticent nature stirred to the rare point of passionate utterance—she told what she had seen of Mysie's end.
'And, oh, Nancy,' she whispered at last, on her knees at her friend's side, 'it was his doing. She was in trouble; it was his fault. She's dead—dead! and but for him she might have been alive and happy—honest at the least.'
But Nancy looked down at her face unmoved, with a little, hard smile.
'Accidents will happen,' she said coolly. 'We must all die, surely. Men will be men. To talk as you do is sheer hysterics. You are a child.'