“I suppose he was sleeping,” she added, with a sort of bravado, “I did not look.”
“Good God!” cried John, springing up, “was there any doubt? Had you any doubt?” He seized his dressing-gown and thrust his arms into the sleeves, and his feet into slippers.
“Aye,” cried Letitia, still without a movement, without even looking at him, “go and see. Nothing would make me face that woman again.”
She sat idly playing with a ring upon her finger, turning it round and round, but neither raised her head nor looked at him, though he paused before her with again the searching look of anxiety which he dared not define.
“Letitia,” he said, “for God’s sake what do you mean? There is something in all this I don’t understand.”
“Ah, don’t I speak plain enough?” she said. “It’s Mary come back, and as mad as a March hare.”
“And you left her—a woman—in that state—alone with the boy, just out of the jaws of death? What’s that on your gown?”
She looked at it, bending forward to see—a long streak as of something spilt. The stain was stiff, giving a rigid line to the stuff—and what John suspected, feared it to be, cannot be put into words. His eyes grew wild with terror, and his voice hoarse, as he repeated:—
“On your gown? What is it? What is it?”
“Oh, the milk!” Letitia said. It brought everything before her, and a shiver ran over her again; but also a laugh, which, though tuneless enough, gave the distracted man by her side some comfort, for she could not have laughed surely if it had been——“We spilt it between us,” Letitia said, “and mad as she was she drew back for that, not to spoil her dress. She had her senses enough for that.”