The witness nodded, too much affected to speak her answer.
“Who was present at supper?”
“Theodore and myself.”
“Mary Mullin and Oldbeg did not eat with you?”
This was a sore spot in Millbank’s estimate of the widow Parlin. The town still held it a Christian duty for “help” to eat at the same table with their employers. Every departure from this primitive rule was occasion for heart-burnings and recriminations.
“They ate by themselves in the kitchen.”
There was a slight raising of the head, a shadow, as it were, of the old self-assertive pride, which in other days would have made itself manifest in answering this question. So deep was Millbank in the tragedy that the audience almost lost the weight of the heinous fact confessed in this answer.
“Did you go directly to your sitting room after supper?”
“No, we went out into the front yard, to look at the flower-beds, and then crossed the road to the orchard and walked through that to the river-bank.”
“From there you returned to the house?”