'You have come here to tell me something dreadful--I know it, I feel it--something dreadful about my husband!'
She pushed her hair back from off her face, and leaned forward on the table, looking at him, her eyes staring, her lips apart. Martin thought he had scarcely ever seen anything so beautiful.
'My visit to you certainly relates to Mr. Claxton,' he began, and then he hesitated and looked down.
'Ah!' she cried, immediately noticing his confusion, 'it is about John, then. There is something wrong, I know. Tell me all about it at once. I can bear it. I am strong--much stronger than I look. I entreat you not to keep me in suspense.'
'I am deeply grieved for you, madam,' said Martin, 'for you are right in anticipating that I bring bad news about Mr. Claxton. During his absence from home, he was attacked by a very sharp illness.'
'He was ill when he left here,' cried Alice. 'I knew it; and Mr. Broadbent, the doctor, knew it too, though I could not get him to say so. He ought not to have gone away. I ought not to have let him go. Now tell me, sir, pray; he has been very ill, you say; is he better?'
'I trust he is better,' said Martin solemnly.
Something in his tone struck Alice at once.
'Ah,' she cried, with a short sharp scream, 'I know now--he is dead!' And covering her face with her hands, she sobbed violently.
Martin Gurwood sat by, gazing at her with tear-dimmed eyes. He was not a man given to the reading of character; he had not been in the room with this girl for more than five minutes, he had not exchanged ten sentences with her, and yet he was certain that Humphrey Statham was perfectly right in the estimate which he had formed of her, and that, however cruelly she might have been treated, she herself was wholly innocent.