Rhoda was speaking angrily as the door closed behind him, and she did not hear his entry. It was evidently her final remark after much that had gone before, and John Tregenna stood there paralysed, as the words fell from her lips.
“I’ll not believe it,” she cried. “Mr Trethick must have sent you here. What proof have you that Mr Tregenna is the wicked man you say?”
“His own looks,” said Madge, as she stood there with flashing eyes and ashy face, seeming to the wretched man like some avenging spirit pointing at him with white and quivering hand. “Ask him, if you will, though you can read the truth there. Now, Miss Penwynn, can you marry such a man as this?”
Rhoda made no answer, for John Tregenna’s brain had reeled. He had made two or three attempts to master, his craven dread, but in vain. Not an hour ago he had cast, as he believed, Madge Mullion down that hideous chasm in the earth, had heard her dying shrieks; and then, gloating over his release from one who would have blasted all his plans, he had come straight on to An Morlock, to find her standing pointing at him with denouncing finger, and telling Rhoda Penwynn of his guilt.
He had striven, fought like a drowning man, but in vain; and, after clutching at a table to save himself, he fell with a heavy crash upon the floor.
Chapter Fifty Five.
Sisters in the Flesh.
Madge kissed her child passionately again and again before replacing it in the cradle. Then she rose to steal to the door, but she could not go without running back to her helpless infant, which seemed somehow that night to draw her to its side.