I felt that she was mixed up in Sir Runan’s early life, and that we were mixed up in Sir Runan’s early death—in fact, that everything was very mixed indeed.
She came back. ‘Give me your name and college,’ she said, ‘not necessarily for publication,’ and I divined that she had once been a proctor at Girton. I gave her my address at the public-house round the corner, and we parted, Mrs. Thompson whispering that she ‘would write.’
On reaching home I leaped to Philippa’s apartment.
A great change had come over her.
She was awake!
I became at once a prey to the wildest anxiety.
The difficulties of my position for the first time revealed themselves to me. If Philippa remained insane, how was I to remove her from the scene of her—alas! of her crime? If Philippa had become sane, her position under my roof was extremely compromising. Again, if she were insane, a jury might acquit her, when the snow melted and revealed all that was left of the baronet. But, in that case, what pleasure or profit could I derive from the society of an insane Philippa? Supposing, on the other hand, she was sane, then was I not an ‘accessory after the fact,’ and liable to all the pains and penalties of such a crime?
Here the final question arose and shook its ghostly finger at me: ‘Can a sane man be an accessory after the fact in a murder committed by an insane woman?’
So far as I know, there is no monograph on this subject, or certainly I would have consulted it for the purpose of this Christmas Annual.
All these questions swept like lightning through my brain, as I knelt by Philippa’s bedside, and awaited her first word.