She was seated at the other end of the room with her back to the little light there was. She looked haggard and apprehensive.
“Is he dead?” she said in a low, awed tone; she knew he was by the face of her little son. “Is he dead, dear?”
Jack looked at her in silence; his eyes had a seriousness in them which was rather a man’s than a child’s, stern, scornful, reproachful.
“Jack, don’t stare like that! Speak to me! Is Harry dead?”
As she spoke she crossed the distance between them and tried to take the child in her embrace; she was alarmed and nervous. What had the dying man said?
Jack recoiled from her outstretched arms and continued to look at her with the gaze she sought to evade.
His expression terrified her extremely; what could the boy know that he was old enough to understand?
“Jack, darling, speak to me,” she said faintly.
“I—I—don’t know much,” said the child slowly in a voice which seemed no more his own. “I don’t—know—much; but I think you are a wicked, wicked, wicked woman. And you killed him.”
Then, without waiting for any answer or remonstrance, Jack turned his back on her and went slowly to the door.