“A delusion! It is too serious, too terrible, to be a delusion. She must be mad. The shock must have turned her brain.”
“It is mere delusion,” said Mrs. Eastwood, with tears. “I went down to Sterborne, as you know, and inquired into everything. You remember that terrible morning, Frederick? You thought I went out of regard for your wife and her father. I went for Innocent’s sake;—now I can tell you. I inquired into everything. It is a mere delusion; there is no foundation for it, nothing to rest upon. But I cannot chase it from the poor child’s mind, and I knew she would tell you some day. I would not have had you know for much; but now that you do know, you must help me with Innocent. She must be convinced.”
“Tell me the whole,” said Frederick; and she sat down by him by the fireside, and told him everything, omitting only by instinct to mention the presence of the housemaid when poor Innocent made her first confession. He drew from her by degrees every particular of the poor girl’s arrival at home, her consistent story, from which she had never departed, and the little phial which had been clasped in her hand. This she showed him, taking it out of a desk in which she had locked it up. It had still a few drops of the opiate in it, and was labelled with the name of Mrs. Frederick Eastwood, and the date. The sight of this strange piece of evidence made Frederick shiver. It made him feel strangely for a moment, as if Amanda still lived, and could have still such drugs administered to her. “It would be better to destroy this,” he said, taking it out of his mother’s hand. She took it back from him anxiously, and put it in the desk again.
“Why should we destroy it?” she said.
“It is the sort of evidence that would tell,” he said, with once more a nervous shiver.
“Oh, Frederick!” cried his mother, “you don’t mean to tell me that you think—it may be true?”
“I don’t know what to think,” he said gloomily. “Mother, I am very unhappy. I care more for Innocent than I ever thought I did. God help us—it sounds very real. Why should she have taken such a thought into her simple mind?”
“God knows!” said his mother, and, moved in her turn, she began to cry, all her doubts and fears returning at the mere thought that some one else thought it possible, thought it true. They sat together over the dying fire, and talked it over in detail, entering into every particular, every recollection. They drew close together in mutual confidence; but they gave each other no comfort. Broken words that had seemed to have no connexion with anything actual came floating back to their memories. Frederick even remembered, with the feeling as of an arrow which had suddenly struck and stung him, the words he himself had heard as he entered his wife’s room on that eventful night, “Can judges get people off?” and both of them were well aware how freely, how simply Innocent had announced her dislike to Frederick’s wife. I do not believe that Frederick had ever been so deeply affected in his life; but even at that moment there came into his mind a certain sombre consciousness of satisfied vanity which made things look still more black for Innocent. “Her known affection for me will supply the motive at once,” he said; his very vanity made him believe the whole strange tale. His mother wavered between wondering doubts how if it were quite untrue such an idea could have come into Innocent’s mind, taking possession of it so strongly—and a sense that it was impossible, that nothing so hideous and terrible could be. But Frederick, by mere stress of conviction that Innocent loved and had always loved him, found possibility, reality in the story at once. He did not even believe her own dreary assertion that she had not meant it. With the certainty of intuition he felt that, being alone with her rival, some irresistible impulse which she perhaps scarcely understood had come over her, some impulse which, being but momentary, had faded perhaps from her recollection. He was very miserable. If ever self-complacency brought its own punishment, this did. His unhappiness was intense in proportion to his conviction, which allowed of no doubt. “What shall we do with her?” he said.
“Oh, Frederick!” said Mrs. Eastwood, “you take everything for proved; and nothing is proved, not even the very first step. Neither you nor any one at Sterborne had the slightest suspicion. Nobody thought of Innocent as implicated. The death arose from natural causes, which had been foreseen, understood. The doctor himself——”
“Ah, the doctor,” said Frederick, “perhaps I ought to see the doctor. But it might excite suspicion. The doctor was going away—he had got an appointment somewhere abroad.”