She felt as if she ought to beg the pardon of everybody in the world.
She could not stand the lonely dining-room long. She rose and walked out. It seemed that she would never reach the door. It was a via crucis to her. Her back ached with the sense of eyes upon it.
The hall was lonely. The thud of the front door jarred her. She went into the library. It was a dark and frowning cavern. She went into the music-room, approached the piano, looked over the music, turned up “Go, Lovely Rose.” The rose that Jim Dyckman said she was had been thrown into the mud. She went up to her room. The maid was arranging her bed for the night. She had turned down one corner of the cover, built up one heap of pillows, set one pair of slippers by the edge.
Charity felt like a rejected old spinster. She sat and mused and her thoughts were bitter. She remembered Doctor Mosely's sermon and wondered if he would preach what he preached if he knew what she knew. She would go to him and tell him.
But what did she know? Enough to convince herself, but nothing at all that even a preacher would call evidence.
She must have proof. She resolved to get it. There must be an abundance of it. She wondered how one went at the getting of evidence.
CHAPTER XV
While Charity was resolving to tear down her life Kedzie Thropp was building herself a new one on the foundations that Charity had laid for her with a card of introduction to Miss Havender.