“What are they going to do?” she breathed.
“They’ll take parts of the lady’s inside and put them into jars. Then the poor soul will rest once more in her coffin. Meanwhile, that which ’as been removed (if you take my meaning) will be taken away to London, and it’s according to the report of the gentleman I pointed out to you just now whether the ’usband will get off scot-free or whether he’ll swing.”
He uttered the dreadful words in a matter-of-fact tone, and Jean turned suddenly sick and faint.
“Will you help me back to the gate?” she muttered. “I don’t want to stay here any longer.”
“Not just a few minutes more?” he asked, disappointed. “If you goes now, you’ll miss the most hinteresting part of the whole affair. They’re just going to unscrew the coffin, and take her out, and it isn’t as if we was near enough to see anything that ’ud frighten you——”
But, already, Jean had turned and was blindly making her way back, among the gravestones, toward the lych-gate.
She was bitterly, bitterly sorry now that she had come. She felt that as long as she lived the memory of to-night would remain most presently and horribly vivid to her, and she knew that it was a memory of shame and horror she must ever bear alone.
“Don’t ’e look like a murderer?”
“Course he does—he is one!”
Harry Garlett turned sharply round. For a moment his weary face, his shrunken eyes, glanced quickly this way and that, seeking to find out who had uttered those cruel words.