"For fear the baby should cry."
"The baby's in a sweet sleep, he is. I wonder whether he'll get reared, that baby?--he's very little. Where's the gentleman?" abruptly inquired Mrs. Chaffen, after a pause.
"What gentleman?"
"Mrs. Grey's husband. Him we saw here last night."
If Ann Hopley had been apathetic before, she was fully aroused to interest now, and turned her eyes upon the nurse with a long stare.
"Why what is it that you are talking of?" she asked. "There has been no gentleman here. Mrs. Grey's husband is abroad."
"But I saw him," persisted the nurse. "He stood right at the head of the staircase when me and Dr. Moore was a-going up it. I saw him."
"I'm sure you didn't."
"I'm sure I did."
Then they went on, asserting and re-asserting. Nurse Chaffen protesting, by all that was truthful, that she did see the gentleman: Ann Hopley denying in the most emphatic language that any gentleman had been there, or could have been. Poor woman! in her faithful zeal for her master's safety; in her terrible inward fear lest this might bring danger upon him, she went so far as to vow by heaven that no living soul had been in the house or about it, save her mistress and the infant, herself and Hopley.