Mr. Reynolds brought in a chair. Then he went out, and quietly closed the door.
Anna’s mistress came and sat on the bench close to her servant. It was almost as if an unconscious woman, spent with the extremity of physical suffering, crouched beside her.
“Anna, listen to me!” she said at last, and there was a touch of salutary command in her voice—a touch of command that poor Anna knew, and always responded to, though it was very seldom used towards her. “I have left Major Guthrie on our marriage day in order to try and help you in this awful disgrace and trouble you have brought, not only on yourself, but on me. All I ask you to do is to tell me the truth. Anna?”—she touched the fat arm close to her—“look up, and talk to me like a reasonable woman. If you are innocent, if you can accuse yourself of no sin—then why are you in such a state?”
Anna looked up eagerly. She was feeling much better now.
“Every reason have I in a state to be! A respectable woman to such a place brought! Roughly by two policemen treated. I nothing did that ashamed of I am!”
“What is it you did do?” said Mrs. Guthrie patiently. “Try and collect your thoughts, Anna. Explain to me where you got”—she hesitated painfully—“where you got the bombs.”
“No bombs there were,” exclaimed Anna confidently. “Chemicals, yes—bombs, no.”
“You are mistaken, Anna,” said Mrs. Guthrie quietly. She rose from the bench on which she had been sitting, and drew up the chair opposite to Anna. “There were certainly bombs found in your room. It is a mercy they did not explode; if they had done, we should all have been killed!”
Anna stared at her in dumb astonishment. “Herr Gott!” she exclaimed. “No one has told me that, gracious lady. Again and again they have asked me questions they should not—questions I to answer promised not. To you, speak I will——”
Anna looked round, as if to satisfy herself that they were indeed alone, and Mrs. Guthrie suddenly grew afraid. Was poor old Anna going to reveal something of a very serious self-incriminating kind?