This, too, struck home, and the doctor winced, but what he said was, “You fooled me for a whole week, and the town knows it; do you think I can forgive you for that?”

“I don’t care whether you forgive me,” replied Grizel at once.

“Nor do I care whether you care,” he rapped out, all the time wishing he could strike himself; “but I’m the doctor of this place, and when your mother was ill you should have come straight to me.  What had I done that you should be afraid of me?”

“I am not afraid of you,” she replied, “I am not afraid of anyone, but mamma was afraid of you because she knew you had said cruel things about her, and I thought—­I won’t tell you what I thought.”  But with a little pressing she changed her mind and told him.  “I was not sure whether you would come to see her, though I asked you, and if you came I knew you would tell her she was dying, and that would have made her scream.  And that is not all, I thought you might tell her that she would be buried with a stake through her—­”

“Oh, these blackguard laddies!” cried McQueen, clenching his fists.

“And so I dared not tell you,” Grizel concluded calmly; “I am not frightened at you, but I was frightened you would hurt my dear darling mamma,” and she went and stood defiantly between him and her mother.

The doctor moved up and down the room, crying, “How did I not know of this, why was I not told?” and he knew that the fault had been his own, and so was furious when Grizel told him so.

“Yes, it is,” she insisted, “you knew mamma was an unhappy lady, and that the people shouted things against her and terrified her; and you must have known, for everybody knew, that she was sometimes silly and wandered about all night, and you are a big strong man, and so you should have been sorry for her; and if you had been sorry you would have come to see her and been kind to her, and then you would have found it all out.”

“Have done, lassie!” he said, half angrily, half beseechingly, but she did not understand that he was suffering, and she went on, relentlessly:  “And you knew that bad men used to come to see her at night—­they have not come for a long time—­but you never tried to stop their coming, and I could have stopped it if I had known they were bad; but I did not know at first, and I was only a little girl, and you should have told me.”

“Have done!” It was all that he could say, for like many he had heard of men visiting the Painted Lady by stealth, and he had only wondered, with other gossips, who they were.

He crossed again to the side of the dead woman, “And Ballingall’s was the only corpse you ever saw straiked?” he said in wonder, she had done her work so well.  But he was not doubting her; he knew already that this girl was clothed in truthfulness.

“Was it you that kept this house so clean?” he asked, almost irritably, for he himself was the one undusted, neglected-looking thing in it, and he was suddenly conscious of his frayed wristband and of buttons hanging by a thread.