Owen shook his head. “All sorts of notions occur to me, sir. Sometimes I fancy that the man might have been Jane’s sweetheart, that he might have been there again on the Monday night, and done the mischief in a quarrel; and that Matilda is holding her tongue because it is her brother. Let the truth be what it will, Matilda’s manner convinces me of one thing: that there’s something she is concealing, and that it is half frightening her wits out of her.——You are going to leave Saltwater, I hear, sir,” added the young man in a different tone, “and I am glad to have the opportunity of saying this, for I should not like you to carry away any doubt of me. I’ll bring the matter to light if I can.”
Touching his hat, he walked onwards, leaving my thoughts all in a whirligig.
Was Owen right in drawing these conclusions?—or was he purposely giving a wrong colouring to facts, and seeking craftily to throw suspicion off himself? It was a nice question, one I could make neither top nor tail of. But, looking back to the fatal evening, weighing this point, sifting that, I began to see that Matilda showed more anxiety, more terror, than she need have shown before she knew that any ill had happened. Had she a prevision, as she stood at the door with the jug of ale in her hand, that some evil might have chanced? Did she leave some individual in the house with Jane Cross when she went to the Swan to get the ale?—and was it her brother? Did she leave Owen in the house, and was she screening him?
“Why, Matilda! Is it you?”
It was fourteen months later, and autumn weather, and I had just arrived in London at Miss Deveen’s. My question to Matilda, who came into my dressing-room with some warm water to wash off the travelling dust, was not made in surprise at seeing her, for I supposed she was still in service at Miss Deveen’s, but at seeing the change in her. Instead of the healthy and, so to say, handsome girl known at Saltwater, I saw a worn, weary, anxious-looking shadow, with a feverish fire in her wild dark eyes.
“Have you been ill, Matilda?”
“No, sir, not at all. I am quite well.”
“You have grown very thin.”
“It’s the London air, sir. I think everybody must get thin who lives in it.”
Very civilly and respectfully, but yet with an unmistakable air of reticence, spoke she. Somehow the girl was changed, and greatly changed. Perhaps she had been grieving after Jane Cross? Perhaps the secret of what had happened (if in truth Matilda knew it) lay upon her with too heavy a weight?