She crept a step nearer to me, her tones growing low and husky.
"Don't you see? I—I—thought that to escape me, she might have leaped into the water. She was capable of it. Gwendolen had a strong nature. The struggle between duty and repulsion made havoc even in her infantile breast. Besides, we had had a scene that morning—a secret scene in which she showed absolute terror of me. It broke my heart, and when she disappeared in that mysterious way—and—and—one of her shoes was found on the slope, what was I to think but that she had chosen to end her misery—this child! this babe I had loved as my own flesh and blood!—in the river where she had been forbidden to go?"
"Suicide by a child of six! You gave another reason for your persistent belief, at the time, Mrs. Ocumpaugh."
"Was I to give this one?"
"No; no one could expect you to do that, even if there had been no secret to preserve and the child had been your own. But the child did not go to the river. You are convinced of that now, are you not?"
"Yes."
"Where then did she go? Or rather, to what place was she taken? Somewhere near; somewhere within easy reach, for the alarm soon rose and then she could not be found. Mrs. Ocumpaugh, I am going to ask you an apparently trivial and inconsequent question. Was Gwendolen very fond of sweets?"
"Yes."
She was sitting upright now, staring me in the face in unconcealed astonishment and a little fear.
"What sort of candy—pardon me if I seem impertinent—had you in your house on the Wednesday the child disappeared? Any which she could have got at or the nurse given her?"