“’Tis a trick—a vile trick! I see it all—I understand it now!” cried the wretched Mrs. Mortimer, staggering towards a chair and gasping for breath:—but in a few moments she seemed to be endowed with a sudden energy, and, bursting from the room, she rushed up-stairs to her own chamber—the landlady, who was a stout and therefore less active woman, following as quickly as she could.
Mrs. Mortimer entered her room, and darted towards her trunk. The lid resisted not her attempt to raise it—for the lock had been forced. She plunged her hand amidst the clothes that the box contained, and felt for something underneath:—but the object of her anxious—her desperate search, was not there;—and, with a groan as it were of mortal agony, she sank upon the floor.
The landlady, who entered the room at this moment, and who was not naturally a bad-hearted being, hastened to raise the miserable woman. She placed her on a chair, and tore off, rather than quietly removed, her bonnet and shawl: but Mrs. Mortimer’s jaw fell—her countenance was ghastly pale—she seemed to be dying.
On water being sprinkled on her face, she came to herself; and the landlady said, “What is the matter with you? I can’t understand the meaning of all this.”
“I have been robbed—foully robbed,” returned Mrs. Mortimer, in a hoarse and hollow tone: but she did not reflect that, no matter how her husband had obtained his money, she had played the part of a foul robber or extortioner towards him.
“Robbed!—what do you mean?” cried the landlady. “Wasn’t them real officers as come just now?”
“No—a thousand times no,” ejaculated the old woman, growing infuriate as her energies revived. “It was a base plot—a vile design:—but I will be avenged—terribly avenged! He must have found someone to advise him—some one to assist him in all this! They watched me—they marked when I went out—and, under pretence of being officers, they succeeded in searching my box—and, what is worse,” she added, with a demoniac contortion of the countenance,—“they succeeded in robbing me!”
“Was it the old man who did this?” asked the landlady.
“Yes: that ancient villain, with the pale face,” was the reply. “But tell me—was not his countenance pale and wrinkled?—and did he not seem nervously excited while speaking to you?”
“Just so,” answered the landlady.