Then silence, deep and awful, fell over us; it lasted until I saw that I must break it. She lay motionless on the ground, her face buried in the grass.
"What should you have done in that man's place, Mrs. Fleming?" I asked.
Then she raised her face; it was whiter, more despairing, more ghastly than I had seen it on the pier.
"I knew it must come," she wailed. "Oh, Heaven, how often have I dreaded this—I knew from the first."
"Then it was you?" I said.
"It was me," she replied. "I need not try to hide it any longer, why should I? Every leaf on every tree, every raindrop that has fallen, every wind that has whispered has told it aloud ever since. If I hide it from you someone else will start up and tell. If I deny it, then the very stones in the street will cry it out. Yes, it was me—wretched, miserable me—the most miserable, the most guilty woman alive—it was me."
My heart went out to her in fullness of pity—poor, unhappy woman! sobbing her heart out; weeping, as surely no one ever wept before. I wished that Heaven had made anyone else her judge than me. Then she sat up facing me, and I wondered what the judge must think when the sentence of death passes his lips. I knew that this was the sentence of death for this woman.
"You never knew what passed after, did you?" I asked.
"No—not at all," was the half sullen reply—"not at all."
"Did you never purchase a Brighton paper, or look into a London paper to see?"