She gasped. For that any human creature, much more a child, should be confined in such a place, buried in the bowels of the earth, seemed so monstrous, so shocking, that she could not believe it!
“Oh!” she cried, forgetting for the moment her own position and her own fate, forgetting everything in her horror and pity. “You have not left the child here! And alone! For shame! For shame!” she continued, turning on them in the heat of her indignation and fearing them no more than a hunter fears a harmless snake—which excites disgust, but not terror. “What do you think will happen to you?”
For a moment, strange to say, her indignation cowed them. For a moment they saw the thing as she saw it; they were daunted. Then Bess sneered:
“You don’t like the place?”
“For that child?”
“For yourself?”
She was burning with indignation, and for answer she climbed into the place, and went on her hands and knees to the child’s side. She bent over it, and listened to its breathing.
“Is’t asleep?” Bess asked. There was a ring of anxiety in her tone. And when Henrietta did not answer, “It’s not dead?” she muttered.
“Dead? No,” Henrietta replied, with a shudder. “But it’s—it’s——”
“What?”