I stood there debating what to do, and wondering if by chance the doctor might have carried out his original intention of going abroad. Then a door opened at the end of the hall, and Martha Leach came out and advanced towards me. She stopped on seeing who the intruder was; then with a gesture dismissed the servant, and silently motioned to me to follow her into another room. It was the dining-room, and when I had gone in she shut the door, and stood waiting for me to speak. I noticed that she seemed thinner than of old, and that there were streaks of grey in her black hair. She stood twisting her white fingers over and over while she watched me.
"I came to see the doctor," I said abruptly. "Where is he?"
"Why do you want to know?" she demanded. "You've been turned out of this place; you ought not to have been admitted now."
"I do not forget the assistance you rendered in turning me out," I said. "Nevertheless I am here now, and I want an answer to my question. I want to find the girl Debora Matchwick."
She stood for a long time, as it seemed to me, in a rigid attitude, with her fingers twining and twisting, and with her eyes bent to the floor. Then suddenly she looked up, and her manner was changed and eager.
"I wonder if you would help me?" was her astonishing remark.
"Try me," I said quietly.
"I suppose you love this slip of a girl—in a fashion you call love," she flashed out at me. "I can't understand it myself—but then, my nature's a different one. You would no more understand what rages here within me"—she smote herself ruthlessly on the breast with both hands—"than I can understand how any man can be attracted by a bread-and-butter child like that. But, perhaps, you can grasp a little what I suffer when I know that that man and that girl are together—miles away from here—and that I am here, tied here by his orders."
"I think I can understand," I said quietly, determined in my own mind to play upon that mad jealousy for my own ends. "And I am sorry for you."
"I don't want your sorrow, and I don't want your pity!" she exclaimed, fiercely brushing away tears that had gathered in her eyes. "Only I shall go mad if this goes on much longer; I can't bear it. He insulted me to my face before her on the day they left for Green Barn together—yesterday that was."