He finished on a sufficiently reproachful note.
Nevertheless, Mrs. Teesdale turned upon him as fiercely as though he had spoken from a brief in Missy's defence.
“What if she had confessed? I'm ashamed of you, David, going on as though that could ha' made any difference! She'd still have deceived us and lied to us all these weeks. Black is black and this—this woman—is that black that God Himself couldn't whiten her!”
And Mrs. Teesdale shook her fist at the guilty girl.
“We have none of us a right to say that,” murmured David.
“But I do say it, and I mean it, too. I say that she'd still have stolen Miriam's letter of introduction, and come here deliberately and passed herself off as Miriam, and slept under our roof, and eaten-our bread, under false pretences—false pretences as shall put her in prison if I have anything to do with it! No confession could have undone all that; and no confession shall keep her out of prison neither, not if I know it!”
Some of them were expecting Missy to take to her heels any moment; but she never showed the least sign of doing so.
“No, nothing can undo it,” she said herself. “I've known that for some time, and I shan't be sorry to pay the cost.”
Then the real Miss Oliver put in her word. It was winged with a sneer.
“It was hardly a compliment,” she said, “to take her for me! You might ask her, by the way, when and where she stole my letters. I lost several.” She could not permit herself to address the culprit direct.