“Harriet’s gone,” replied Mrs. James.
“Gone! Gone where?”
“To London. She went off there yesterday morning.”
Miss Timmens felt, as she would have said, struck into herself. An idea flashed over her that the words had not a syllable of truth in them.
“What did she go to London for?”
Mrs. James glanced over her two shoulders, seemingly in terror herself, and sunk her voice to a whisper. “She had grown afraid of the place, this dark winter weather. Miss Timmens—it’s as true as you’re there—nothing would persuade her out of the fancy that she was always seeing David Garth. He used to stand in a sheet at the end of the upstairs passage and look at her. Leastways, she said so.”
This nearly did for Miss Timmens. It might be true; and she could not confute it. “Do you see him, Mrs. James?”
“Well, no; I never have. Goodness knows, I don’t want to.”
“But Harriet was not well enough to take a long journey,” contended Miss Timmens. “She never could have undertaken one in her state of health.”