“She left her window open all night? Well, and what happened?” Mary said.
Mr. Darrell cleared his throat. A kind of loathing of the glib woman, who was so ready to answer for him, quickened his speech. “So far as we can tell, something came into her room and frightened her,” he said.
“Something? Oh! this is trifling,” cried Mary impatiently. “Many, many a night have I slept in this house with my window open. The windows were always open. What is there about, to come in at an open window in the middle of the night?”
The two culprits exchanged a glance across the table. The housekeeper could see the doctor’s pale face full of revelations, but he could not see hers. “That’s what we don’t know,” she said. “Miss Hofland will tell you that she warned her just as I did. Supposing it was something quite innocent—as harmless as you please—one of the sheep in the park, or a cow! A cow’s an innocent thing, but it would give you a terrible fright in the middle of the night; or even a rabbit or a squirrel,” continued Mrs. Mills, getting confidence as she went on; “it was one of the animals about the place, for anything we know.”
“What do you know? will you tell me exactly? What roused you first? and when you went to her what did you see?”
The housekeeper shivered a little. “We found her lying on her bed, poor dear! with her eyes staring, the bedclothes clenched in her hands as if she had tried to cover her face. Oh, Mrs. Asquith! I thought the child was dead.” She stopped with a half sob. “And the half of the French window wide open—it’s not a sash window in that room—standing wide open, showing how it had come in.”
“How what had come in?” said Mary huskily, scarcely able to command her voice.
“How can I tell? Some wild creature out of the woods—some of the animals that had got loose about the farm.”
“Was there any trace of an animal? There must have been some trace!”
“Or it might,” said the housekeeper with a sob, the strong excitement of the moment gaining upon her, “have been a tramp that had hidden about the place.”