Athwart the long, low-studded attic, a slant sunbeam from a single small window lay, filled with dancing motes, and only half illuminating the barren, dreary apartment.  In the ray of this sunbeam she saw the child’s glowing hair, as if crowned by a red aureole, as she sat upon the floor with her exaggerated doll between her knees.  She appeared to be talking to it; and it was not long before Mrs. Tretherick observed that she was rehearsing the interview of a half-hour before.  She catechized the doll severely, cross-examining it in regard to the duration of its stay there, and generally on the measure of time.  The imitation of Mrs. Tretherick’s manner was exceedingly successful, and the conversation almost a literal reproduction, with a single exception.  After she had informed the doll that she was not her mother, at the close of the interview she added pathetically, “that if she was dood, very dood, she might be her mamma, and love her very much.”

I have already hinted that Mrs. Tretherick was deficient in a sense of humor.  Perhaps it was for this reason that this whole scene affected her most unpleasantly; and the conclusion sent the blood tingling to her cheek.  There was something, too, inconceivably lonely in the situation.  The unfurnished vacant room, the half-lights, the monstrous doll, whose very size seemed to give a pathetic significance to its speechlessness, the smallness of the one animate, self-centered figure—­all these touched more or less deeply the half-poetic sensibilities of the woman.  She could not help utilizing the impression as she stood there, and thought what a fine poem might be constructed from this material if the room were a little darker, the child lonelier—­say, sitting beside a dead mother’s bier, and the wind wailing in the turrets.  And then she suddenly heard footsteps at the door below, and recognized the tread of the colonel’s cane.

She flew swiftly down the stairs, and encountered the colonel in the hall.  Here she poured into his astonished ear a voluble and exaggerated statement of her discovery, and indignant recital of her wrongs.  “Don’t tell me the whole thing wasn’t arranged beforehand; for I know it was!” she almost screamed.  “And think,” she added, “of the heartlessness of the wretch, leaving his own child alone here in that way.”

“It’s a blank shame!” stammered the colonel, without the least idea of what he was talking about.  In fact, utterly unable as he was to comprehend a reason for the woman’s excitement, with his estimate of her character, I fear he showed it more plainly than he intended.  He stammered, expanded his chest, looked stern, gallant, tender, but all unintelligently.  Mrs. Tretherick, for an instant, experienced a sickening doubt of the existence of natures in perfect affinity.

“It’s of no use,” said Mrs. Tretherick with sudden vehemence, in answer to some inaudible remark of the colonel’s, and withdrawing her hand from the fervent grasp of that ardent and sympathetic man.  “It’s of no use:  my mind is made up.  You can send for my trunk as soon as you like; but I shall stay here, and confront that man with the proof of his vileness.  I will put him face to face with his infamy.”