"He is always watching me," said Kate, dully.
"Yas 'm. I done tried to warn you. Hit were de letter. Ef you jes' hadn't 'a' sent de letter!"
"My husband saw that?"
"Yas 'm. I don gib it to him."
Kate recoiled, staring at her. "You! You gave it?" she whispered. "You whom I have trusted! My own servant!"
The mulatto woman's expression was a queer mixture of malice, and triumph, and pity.
"I was his servant first," said Mahaly.
Several months later, news came of the death of Mrs. Benoix in the mountains.
But it found Kate oddly indifferent. She was lingering, then, upon a certain dark threshold which she would have crossed very gladly but for voices that held her back; the prattle of a child, the thin, helpless whimper of a baby. She had just given birth to her third daughter.