“Oh, how could any one let you wander about like this!” cried the maid, “and where is your luggage? Come to the kitchen, miss, there’s no other fire lighted. You are as cold as ice, and all of a tremble. Come in, come in for goodness’ sake, and I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
Innocent smiled her habitual smile of vague and dreamy sweetness in acknowledgment of this kindness—but she shook her head and went straight up-stairs to the door of Mrs. Eastwood’s room. Her first arrival there came up before her as she paused at the door—her dissatisfaction, her indifference—oh, if she had stayed in the little room, within Nelly’s, within the mother’s, could this thing have happened to her, could any such harm have reached her? This question floated wistfully before her mind, increasing the strange confusion of feelings of which she was vaguely conscious; but she did not pause for more than an instant. Mrs. Eastwood was still asleep, or so at least Innocent thought; but the very aspect of the familiar room was consolatory. It seemed to protect her, to make her safe. She stole softly to the alcove where the grey morning light struggled in through the closed curtains. As Innocent approached Mrs. Eastwood opened her eyes, with the instinctive promptitude of a mother, used to be appealed to at all times and seasons. She started at the sight of the strange figure in hat and shawl, and sat up in her bed, with all her faculties suddenly collecting to her, to prepare her for the something, she knew not what, which she instinctively felt to have befallen.
“Innocent! Good heavens, how have you come? What is the matter?” she cried. Innocent fell down on her knees by the bed; the fatigue, the cold, the personal suffering of which up to this moment she had been scarcely conscious, seemed suddenly to overflow, and become too much for her to bear. She clasped Mrs. Eastwood’s arm between her own, and looked up to her with a ghastly face, and piteous looks of appeal; her lips moved, but no words came. Now she had got to the end of her journey, the end of her troubles; but now all capacity seemed to fail her. She could not do more.
“My child—my poor child!” said Mrs. Eastwood. “Oh, Innocent, why did I let you go from me? Speak, dear, tell me what it is? Innocent, speak!”
“Do not be angry,” said poor Innocent, raising her piteous face, with a child’s utter abandonment and dependence upon the one standard of good and evil which alone it understands. And yet the face was more woeful, more distraught, than child’s face could be. Mrs. Eastwood, anxious yet reassured, concluded that the poor girl, weary and frightened of strangers, had run away from the High Lodge to come home, an offence which might well seem terrible to Innocent. What could it be else? She bent over her and kissed her, and tried to draw her into her arms.
“My poor child, how you are trembling. I am not angry, Innocent; why are you so frightened? Sit down and rest, and let me get up, and then you can tell me. Come, dear, come; it cannot be anything so very bad,” said Mrs. Eastwood with a smile, endeavouring to disengage her arm from Innocent’s hold.
But the girl’s fixed gaze, and her desperate clasp did not relax. Her white face was set and rigid. “Do not be angry!” she said again, with a voice of woe strangely at variance with the simple entreaty; and while Mrs. Eastwood waited expecting to hear some simple confession, such as that Innocent had been frightened by the strange faces, or weary of the monotonous life, and had run away—there suddenly fell upon her horrified ears words which stunned her, and seemed to make life itself stand still. They came slow, with little pauses between, accompanied by a piteous gaze which watched every movement of the listener’s face, and with a convulsive pressure of the arm which Innocent held to her bosom.
“I have killed Frederick’s wife,” she said.
“What does she say? She must be mad!” cried Mrs. Eastwood. The housemaid had followed Innocent into the room with officious anxiety, carrying the cup of tea, which was a means of satisfying her curiosity as to this strange and sudden arrival. Just as these terrible words were said she appeared at the foot of the bed, holding the tray in her hand.
“No,” said Innocent, seeing nothing but her aunt’s face; “no, I am not mad. It was last night. I came home somehow, I scarcely know how—it was last night.”