“You’re breaking your promise!” cried Mrs. Rook. “You false girl, you’re breaking your promise!”
She snatched at the veil, and put it on again. The sight of her face, momentary as it had been, reassured Emily. Her wild eyes, made wilder still by the blurred stains of rouge below them, half washed away—her disheveled hair, with streaks of gray showing through the dye—presented a spectacle which would have been grotesque under other circumstances, but which now reminded Emily of Mr. Rook’s last words; warning her not to believe what his wife said, and even declaring his conviction that her intellect was deranged. Emily drew back from the bed, conscious of an overpowering sense of self-reproach. Although it was only for a moment, she had allowed her faith in Mirabel to be shaken by a woman who was out of her mind.
“Try to forgive me,” she said. “I didn’t willfully break my promise; you frightened me.”
Mrs. Rook began to cry. “I was a handsome woman in my time,” she murmured. “You would say I was handsome still, if the clumsy fools about me had not spoiled my appearance. Oh, I do feel so weak! Where’s my medicine?”
The bottle was on the table. Emily gave her the prescribed dose, and revived her failing strength.
“I am an extraordinary person,” she resumed. “My resolution has always been the admiration of every one who knew me. But my mind feels—how shall I express it?—a little vacant. Have mercy on my poor wicked soul! Help me.”
“How can I help you?”
“I want to recollect. Something happened in the summer time, when we were talking at Netherwoods. I mean when that impudent master at the school showed his suspicions of me. (Lord! how he frightened me, when he turned up afterward at Sir Jervis’s house.) You must have seen yourself he suspected me. How did he show it?”
“He showed you my locket,” Emily answered.
“Oh, the horrid reminder of the murder!” Mrs. Rook exclaimed. “I didn’t mention it: don’t blame Me. You poor innocent, I have something dreadful to tell you.”