Agnes looked at the man who was comparatively little known to her, who was a man, frightening and disturbing in his strange undress in the midst of the silent house. She was an elderly single woman, unaccustomed to give any account of herself to strange men, and her weariness and all the unusual circumstances told upon her. Her lips quivered and her eyes filled. “Oh,” she said, “Mr. Parke, do not think we meant any—any reproach. Things have happened that have brought my sister to her full senses—and to remember everything. I could not keep her from her boy—you would not keep her from her boy——”
“Not if she is sane; not if it is safe,” said John. He looked in again through the half closed door. Once more Mary’s keen ear caught the sound; and again she turned towards him her face, which was like the morning sky. She had never been beautiful in her best and youngest days. Now with her grey hair ruffled by the night’s vigil, her mild eyes cleared from any film that had been upon them, lambent and inspired with watchful love, her look overawed the anxious spectator. He stepped back again with a sort of apologetic humility. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “You seem to have some meaning among you that I don’t know: but I cannot be the one to disturb her. I hope—I hope that I am making no mistake——”
“You are making no mistake, Mr. Parke,” said Agnes. “Mar was my child more than hers; he was my baby. My heart was nearly broken, for I thought he was dying when I came here last night. But I trust him in his mother’s hands. I give place to her because it is her right. Do you think I would leave my boy to her if she were not in her full senses, ready to defend him, ready to protect him——?”
She stopped, choked with the sobs, which, in her great exhaustion and emotion, Agnes could no longer entirely keep down.
“To defend him—to protect him? From what? from what?” John said.
“Oh, how can I tell? From the perils and dangers of the night; from carelessness and any ill wish.”
John’s voice was choked as that of Agnes’ had been. “There is no ill wish,” he said—“none—to Mar in this house.”
He saw, as he spoke, the traces on the floor of something spilt like that on his wife’s gown—and some fragments of the broken glass which had escaped Agnes’ scrutiny. He did not know what they meant. He was not clever, nor had he any imagination to divine; but something went through him like a cold blast, chilling him to the heart. He paused a moment, staring at the floor, and the words died away on his lips.
When John returned to his wife’s room Letitia was in bed, and to all appearance fast asleep. The poor man was glad, if such a word could be applied to anything he was capable of feeling. He withdrew softly into his dressing-room, and sat there for a long time with his head in his hands and his face hidden. What to think of the mysterious things that had passed that night he did not know.