"Listen!" Mrs. Osborn went on through her teeth. "Even for that, there are things I haven't the nerve to stand. I have thought I could stand them. But I can't. It does not matter why. I am going to tell you the truth. You represent too much. You have been too great a temptation. Nobody meant anything or planned anything at first. It all came by degrees. To see you smiling and enjoying everything and adoring that stilted prig of a Walderhurst put ideas into people's heads, and they grew because every chance fed them. If Walderhurst would come home—"
Lady Walderhurst put out her hand to a letter which lay on the table.
"I heard from him this morning," she said. "And he has been sent to the Hills because he has a little fever. He must be quiet. So you see he cannot come yet."
She was shivering, though she was determined to keep still.
"What was in the milk?" she asked.
"In the milk there was the Indian root Ameerah gave the village girl. Last night as I sat under a tree in the dark I heard it talked over. Only a few native women know it."
There was a singular gravity in the words poor Lady Walderhurst spoke in reply.
"That," she said, "would have been the cruelest thing of all."
Mrs. Osborn got up and came close to her.
"If you had gone out on Faustine," she said, "you would have met with an accident. It might or might not have killed you. But it would have been an accident. If you had gone downstairs before Jane Cupp saw the bit of broken balustrade you might have been killed—by accident again. If you had leaned upon the rail of the bridge you would have been drowned, and no human being could have been accused or blamed."