“I don’t know who you are, sir; but I can tell you this, the girl had no medicine,—took no dose; she wasn’t sick last night that I know of.”
“Yet I saw her swallow a powder.”
“Saw her!—the world is crazy, or I am—saw her swallow a powder! How could you see her do that or anything else? Hasn’t she been shut up in this room for twenty-four hours?”
“Yes; but with a window like that in the roof, it isn’t so very difficult to see into the room, madam.”
“Oh,” she cried, shrinking, “I have a spy in the house, have I? But I deserve it; I kept her imprisoned in four close walls, and never came to look at her once all night. I don’t complain; but what was it you say you saw her take? medicine? poison?”
“I didn’t say poison.”
“But you meant it. You think she has poisoned herself, and that I had a hand in it!”
“No,” I hastened to remark, “he does not think you had a hand in it. He says he saw the girl herself swallow something which he believes to have been the occasion of her death, and only asks you now where she obtained it.”
“How can I tell? I never gave her anything; didn’t know she had anything.”
Somehow, I believed her, and so felt unwilling to prolong the present interview, especially as each moment delayed the action which I felt it incumbent upon us to take. So, motioning Q to depart upon his errand, I took Mrs. Belden by the hand and endeavored to lead her from the room. But she resisted, sitting down by the side of the bed with the expression, “I will not leave her again; do not ask it; here is my place, and here I will stay,” while Q, obdurate for the first time, stood staring severely upon us both, and would not move, though I urged him again to make haste, saying that the morning was slipping away, and that the telegram to Mr. Gryce ought to be sent.