“I woke up to hear her scolding. Oh, how red she was! how her eyes blazed! She shook me and called to me, and cried that she would strike me. I was not half awake; I was trembling——”
“Poor Innocent, you are trembling now. My darling, what does all this matter? Another time will do——”
“I had to drop the drops,” said Innocent, sinking her voice lower; “I had never done it before. My hand shook and she scolded, and I could not. At last—oh, do not be angry—she seized it out of my hand, and drank it. Listen! she drank it—and then she died. Do you know what that means? I killed Frederick’s wife!”
“Good God! Innocent!”
“I was afraid—I was afraid!—I knew you would be angry!” she cried.
Sir Alexis withdrew the arm he had put round her. He was speechless with wonder and horror. “Good God!” he repeated, when he had found his voice; “what did you do?”
“What did I do?” she asked vaguely, looking at him with wonder and incomprehension.
“Yes; you alarmed the people, of course? You told them what had happened?—you had everything done that could be done? How strange that I should have heard nothing of all this!” he said, rising to his feet.
Innocent’s heart sank within her. She looked up at him with anxious eyes, into which the tears were coming. No one had been angry before. They had all wept over her, comforted her. But now, at last, he was angry in whom she had placed her last hope. Sobs began to rise in her throat; she deserved that he should be angry, she knew—yet she looked up at him with a pitiful appeal against his wrath. She was guilty of killing Frederick’s wife; but of all this that came after—this which she ought to have done, and did not—no one had ever told her. She made him no reply save by her look, by the big tears that rose into her eyes.
He had risen from her side rather in excitement and dismay than with any intention of deserting the poor child who had thus thrown herself upon him. When his eyes returned to her, and he met her piteous look, his heart melted. He came back and sat down by her again. “Poor Innocent,” he said, “poor little bewildered child! What did you do?”