He sprung from me.
“I didn’t—I didn’t!” he shrieked. “How dare you say such a thing?”
“Oh,” I groaned, “shall I hand you over to Duke Straw, when the time comes, and be quit of you forever?”
“Don’t be a cruel brute!” he answered, almost whimpering. “I didn’t do it, I tell you. But perhaps he didn’t die of drowning, and I may have had my suspicions.”
“Of me?”
“No, no—not really of you, upon my oath; but some one else.”
“And yet all these years you have held the horror over my head and have made wicked capital out of it.”
“I wanted the changeling—that was why.”
I threw him from me, so that he staggered against the wall.
“You are such a despicable beast,” I said, “that I’ll pollute my hands with you no longer. Answer me one thing more. Where’s the letter my father wrote to me when you were leaving Winton?”