"You are right," she cried passionately. "I have not taught the children to deceive you! I have never come into this house until I felt sure that they were asleep and alone, though I've often wondered that they never woke up and knew that their own mother was there! But more than once, James, I've felt like going after that society which looks after badly treated children—for the last nurse you had for them was so cruel! If she hadn't left you soon I should have had to do something! I used to feel desperate when I saw her shake Baby in her pram; why, one day, in the Inclosure, a lady spoke to her about it, and threatened to tell her—her mistress——"
Flossy's voice sank to a shamed whisper. The tears were rolling down her cheeks; she was speaking in angry gasps, and what she said actually made James Tapster feel, what he knew full well he had no reason to feel, ashamed of himself. "That is why," she went on, "that is why I have, as you say, forced myself into your house, and why, too, I have now come here to ask you to forgive me—to take me back—just for the sake of the children."
Mr. Tapster's mind was one that traveled surely, if slowly. He saw his chance, and seized it. "And why," he said impressively, "had that woman—the nurse, I mean—no mistress? Tell me that, Flossy. You should have thought of all that before you behaved as you did!"
"I didn't know—I didn't think——"
Mr. Tapster finished the sentence for her: "You didn't think," he observed impressively, "that I should ever find you out."
Then there came over him a morbid wish to discover—to learn from her own lips—why Flossy had done such a shameful and extraordinary thing as to be unfaithful to her marriage vow.
"Whatever made you behave so?" he asked in a low voice. "I wasn't unkind to you, was I? You had a nice, comfortable home, hadn't you?"
"I was mad," she answered, with a touch of sharp weariness. "I don't suppose I could ever make you understand; and yet,"—she looked at him deprecatingly,—"I suppose, James, that you too were young once, and—and—mad?"
Mr. Tapster stared at Flossy. What extraordinary things she said! Of course he had been young once; for the matter of that, he didn't feel old—not to say old—even now. But he had always been perfectly sane—she knew that well enough! As for her calling herself mad, that was a mere figure of speech. Of course, in a sense, she had been mad to do what she had done, and he was glad that she now understood this; but her saying so simply begged the whole question, and left him no wiser than he was before.
There was a long, tense silence between them. Then Mr. Tapster slowly rose from his arm-chair and faced his wife.