A great change had come over Milly. Her face had grown pinched and white, her hands were clammy, and a wild despairing look in her eyes made them awful to look upon. Alice needed all her courage to keep herself from swooning.
"Has she any friends, Grif?" she asked.
"None as I knows on," replied Grif. "Don't you know who she is?"
He was about to answer his own question, and tell Alice of Jim Pizey, but just then Milly murmured the man's name.
"Why did you go away, Jim Pizey," she said, "and leave me to starve and drink myself to death? And then to write, you never want to see my face again. It is cruel--it is cruel! Look at me--I am dying, and you have killed me. I don't want to die! Lord help me, I'm not fit to die!"
"Grif," whispered Alice, "was not Jim Pizey the man who tempted my husband to crime?"
"Yes," answered Grif, "and before I came for you she was speaking of him."
"Of my husband, Richard?"
"Yes, but I couldn't make out what she meant."
Milly's wandering speech prevented the continuance of the subject.