“Mamma doesn’t like the rocks,” Kate had been wont to say, perhaps with a sort of fancy that her mother’s age made it natural that she should not care for scrambling. But it was with steps light and active as Katharine’s own that Mrs Kingsworth made her way down to the fatal cove, where she had never been since her husband’s death.
She looked round about her with a sense of awe and of compassion for the two young lives that had there been sacrificed, with an earnest endeavour to lay her hard thoughts to sleep, and to forgive if she could never forget the past. Her eyes filled with tears, she thought thankfully of Kate’s honest generosity, and resolved to try for a better understanding with her for the future, not to misjudge the natural girlish spirits, which had so long passed away from herself.
Suddenly she became aware that she was not alone, but that a fisher-woman was standing beside her, looking at her keenly.
“If you please, ma’am,” the new comer said, “I am Alice Taylor.”
“I do not know what you can have to say to me, Alice,” said Mrs Kingsworth, surprised. “Do not think I should bring up again anything that is past and gone.”
“I want you to say, ma’am, what made you think as I took they earrings,” said Alice, sturdily.
“I do not think I quite remember the details, they were swept out of my memory by the events that followed. Were they not found in the nursery?”
“Yes, ma’am; but it was Eliza put them there. Eliza the housemaid. We quarrelled over a young man, ma’am. My husband he is now, and I did not take your earrings. I didn’t indeed.”
“Well, Alice,” said Mrs Kingsworth after a moment, “if so you have been greatly wronged, and I believe you speak the truth. Would you like me to talk to Mr Clare about you?”
“Well it’s hard to have a bad name, and they earrings stuck by me. But now, ma’am, ’tis I that have something to tell you. When I was sent away that night, I didn’t dare go home to father, and I made up my mind I’d get off in the morning to my aunt at Whitecliff. So I waited about on the shore, just here where we stand, ma’am, and all to once I heard voices above over there, and some one called out, ‘James, come away, we’re close to the cliff. Come away or there’ll be an end.’ Then I heard Mr James’ voice, ‘Which way? Where are we? Stand still.’ And then there was an awful cry and a splash in the water, and I screamed and screeched for help, but no one came, and the fog was too thick to see, and at last I got away round the corner and along the beach to Whitecliff. But I knew what we should hear in the morning.”