The room Bertha had entered was the nursery. In the room opening out of it Jack and Janey slept in their small beds. Upon the hearth-rug lay a broken toy. She bent to pick it up, and afterward stood a moment holding it in her hand without seeing it; she still held it as she sank into a chair which was near her.
"I will stay here a while," she said. "This is the best place for me."
For a few minutes she sat quite still; something like a stupor had settled upon her; she was thinking in a blind, disconnected way of Agnes Sylvestre. Everything would be right at last. Agnes would be happy. This was what she had wished—what she had intended from the first—when she had brought them together. It was she who had brought them together. And this was the plan she had had in her mind when she had done it; and she had known what it would cost her even then. And then there came back to her the memory of the moment when she had turned away from them to pour out Laurence's coffee with hands she could not hold still, and whose tremor he saw and understood. Poor Laurence! he must suffer too! Poor Laurence!
She looked down suddenly at the broken toy in her hand.
"I will stay here more," she said. "It is better here. There is nothing else! And if I were a good woman I should want nothing else. If I had only not spoken to Agnes,—that was the mistake; if she will only forget it! Some one should be happy—some one! It will be Agnes."
She got up and went into the children's room, and knelt down by Janey's bed, laying the toy on the coverlet. She put her arms around the child and spoke her name.
"Janey!" she said. "Janey!"
The child stirred, opened her eyes, and put an arm sleepily about her neck.
"I said my prayers," she murmured. "God bless mamma and papa—and everybody! God bless Uncle Philip!"