‘And have you been to bed, Bessie?’

’Me?  No, ma’am.  What should I go to bed for?  I’m as well as well, ma’am.  Miss Milly slept in Miss Rose’s bedroom, for a bit, and Miss Ethel on the sofy in the drawing-room—­not as you might call that sleeping.  Miss Rose said you was to have some tea before you got up, ma’am.  Shall I tell cook to get it now?’

‘I really think I should prefer to have it downstairs, Bessie, thanks,’ said Leonora.

‘Very well, ma’am.  But Miss Rose said——­’

‘Yes, but I will have it downstairs.  In three-quarters of an hour, say.’

‘Very well, ma’am.  Now is there anything I can do for you, ma’am?’

While dressing, very placidly and deliberately, and while thinking upon all the multitudinous things that seemed to have happened in her world during her long slumber, Leonora dwelt too upon the extraordinary loving kindness of this hireling, who got twenty pounds a year, half-a-day a week, and a day a month.  On the first of every month Leonora handed to Bessie one paltry sovereign, thirteen shillings, and the odd fourpence in coppers.  She wondered fancifully if she would have the effrontery to requite the girl in coin on the next pay-day; and she was filled with a sense of the goodness of humanity.  And then there crossed her mind the recollection that she had caught John in a wicked act on the previous night.  Yes; he had not imposed on her for a moment; and she perceived clearly now that murder had been in his heart.  She was not appalled nor desolated.  She thought:  ’So that is murder, that little thing, that thing over in a minute!’ It appeared to her that murder in the concrete was less dreadful than murder in the abstract, far less horrible than the strident sound of the word on the lips of a newsboy, or the look of it in the ‘Signal.’  She felt dimly that she ought to be shocked, unnerved, terrified, at the prospect of living, eating, and sleeping with a man who had meant to kill.  But she could not summon these sensations.  She merely experienced a kind of pity for John.  She put the episode away from her, as being closed, accidental, and unimportant.  Uncle Meshach was alive.

A few minutes before four o’clock, she went quietly into the sick-room.  Bessie, sitting upright between the beds, put her finger to her lips.  Uncle Meshach was asleep on Ethel’s bed, and on the other bed lay Rose, also asleep, stretched in a negligent attitude, but fully dressed and wearing an old black frock that was too tight for her.  The fire burned brightly.

‘Tea is ready in the drawing-room, ma’am,’ Bessie whispered, ’and Mr. Twemlow has just called.  He’s waiting to see you.’

* * * * *

‘So you know what has happened to us?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ’I met your husband on St. Luke’s Square.  But I heard something before that.  At one o’clock, a man told me at Knype Station that Mr. Myatt had cut his throat on your doorstep.  I didn’t believe it.  So I called up Twemlow & Stanway over the ’phone and got on to the facts.’