I asked if the chemist had written the note. Foolish enough of me when I came to think of it. The chemist would scarcely act a friendly part toward Helena, when she was answerable for the awkward position in which he had placed himself. Perhaps the young man who had left the warning was also the writer of the warning. The doctor reminded me that he was all but a stranger to Helena. “We are not usually interested,” he remarked, “in a person whom we only know by sight.”
“Remember that he is a young man,” I ventured to say. This was a strong hint, but the doctor failed to see it. He had evidently forgotten his own youth. I made another attempt.
“And vile as Helena is,” I continued, “we cannot deny that this disgrace to her sex is a handsome young lady.”
He saw it at last. “Woman’s wit!” he cried. “You have hit it, Miss Jillgall. The young fool is smitten with her, and has given her a chance of making her escape.”
“Do you think she will take the chance?”
“For all our sakes, I pray God she may! But I don’t feel sure about it.”
“Why?”
“Recollect what you and Eunice have done. You have shown your suspicion of her without an attempt to conceal it. If you had put her in prison you could not have more completely defeated her infernal design. Do you think she is a likely person to submit to that, without an effort to be even with you?”
Just as he said those terrifying words, Maria came back to us. He asked at once what had kept her so long upstairs.
The girl had evidently something to say, which had inflated her (if I may use such an expression) with a sense of her own importance.