Left alone she gazed and gazed at the back of the door, then spasmodically rang the bell.  An honest-looking country maid-servant appeared in response.

‘A hat!’ murmured Baptista, pointing with her finger.  ’It does not belong to us.’

‘O yes, I’ll take it away,’ said the young woman with some hurry ’It belongs to the other gentleman.’

She spoke with a certain awkwardness, and took the hat out of the room.  Baptista had recovered her outward composure.  ’The other gentleman?’ she said.  ‘Where is the other gentleman?’

’He’s in the next room, ma’am.  He removed out of this to oblige ‘ee.’

‘How can you say so?  I should hear him if he were there,’ said Baptista, sufficiently recovered to argue down an apparent untruth.

‘He’s there,’ said the girl, hardily.

‘Then it is strange that he makes no noise,’ said Mrs Heddegan, convicting the girl of falsity by a look.

‘He makes no noise; but it is not strange,’ said the servant.

All at once a dread took possession of the bride’s heart, like a cold hand laid thereon; for it flashed upon her that there was a possibility of reconciling the girl’s statement with her own knowledge of facts.

‘Why does he make no noise?’ she weakly said.

The waiting-maid was silent, and looked at her questioner.  ’If I tell you, ma’am, you won’t tell missis?’ she whispered.

Baptista promised.

‘Because he’s a-lying dead!’ said the girl.  ’He’s the schoolmaster that was drowned yesterday.’

‘O!’ said the bride, covering her eyes.  ’Then he was in this room till just now?’

‘Yes,’ said the maid, thinking the young lady’s agitation natural enough.  ’And I told missis that I thought she oughtn’t to have done it, because I don’t hold it right to keep visitors so much in the dark where death’s concerned; but she said the gentleman didn’t die of anything infectious; she was a poor, honest, innkeeper’s wife, she says, who had to get her living by making hay while the sun sheened.  And owing to the drowned gentleman being brought here, she said, it kept so many people away that we were empty, though all the other houses were full.  So when your good man set his mind upon the room, and she would have lost good paying folk if he’d not had it, it wasn’t to be supposed, she said, that she’d let anything stand in the way.  Ye won’t say that I’ve told ye, please, m’m?  All the linen has been changed, and as the inquest won’t be till tomorrow, after you are gone, she thought you wouldn’t know a word of it, being strangers here.’

The returning footsteps of her husband broke off further narration.  Baptista waved her hand, for she could not speak.  The waiting-maid quickly withdrew, and Mr Heddegan entered with the smelling salts and other nostrums.

‘Any better?’ he questioned.

‘I don’t like the hotel,’ she exclaimed, almost simultaneously.  ’I can’t bear it—­it doesn’t suit me!’