“I summoned self-command enough to answer, pretty steadily—
“‘It’s I, sir.’
“He got up from the table, and turned towards the door; but an impulse seized me to learn what I could then. I remembered with a sort of inspiration, where the matches were, found them, and struck a light. I was just in time to see my master’s hands as he opened the door: they were stained with blood!
“‘What have you done? You have killed her!’ I hissed out close to him.
“‘Before Heaven I have not!’ he answered, huskily; but his teeth were chattering, and his eyes were glassy and fixed.
“Then, covering his face with his hands with a groan, he turned and staggered out of the room. As he did so he dropped something, which I picked up and examined without scruple. I admit that this was high-handed, but when you are almost a witness to a foul action, you make new laws for yourself on the spur of the moment. By this time I had quite recovered myself. I lit a candle, and read every word of the letters which Nellie Mitchell had flourished before my face that evening. There were no names used. The gentleman had insisted upon caution, as the girl over and over again complained. For these letters were hers, and as each successive one was full of more and more bitter reproaches against her lover, I guessed that it was the return of her letters which had at last goaded the girl to desperation. Her jealousy of Mrs. Brander was expressed on every page, and the last contained a threat of exposure. It was evident that, whatever the girl’s character might have been, she was bitterly in earnest over this passion. In spite of myself, the burning words, guilty though they were, filled me with a kind of pity, increased by the awful suspicion which now possessed me. I felt the hot tears fall upon the papers in my hands, and I was so absorbed in my reading that I did not hear my master come into the room again; for the door had been left open. When at last I heard his tread close behind me I started, but did not attempt to hide how I was engaged. He did not seem startled to see the letters in my hand, but, taking them from me, he read them right through, one by one, and then placed them in his desk. His face was as white as that of a dead man, and the hands he had just washed were livid round the nails. He looked the wreck of the man who had gone out to his work that afternoon in the August sunshine. When he had shut his desk he turned very calmly to me and said—
“‘You will leave me to-morrow, of course; but you had better not go very far, as there will be an inquiry—an inquest; all sorts of things—and your evidence will be important—against me.’
“Those last two words decided me. My life was my own. This man was my own kin. I answered, as calmly as he had spoken to me—
“‘You are my master, sir, and of my own blood. I shall stay with you as long as you please to keep me. If your conscience is bad, I shall be an everlasting prick to it; if it is clear, as I pray Heaven, you will have at least one friend when you most want one.’”
Olivia started up all on fire.