“Go on,” he said at last, wearily.

“Ah, I didn’t tell him, sir,” she explained, misinterpreting his silence.  “I wouldn’t have done that.  He sore angered me, though he may have meant well.  He was set on seeing the child then, but I wouldn’t let him.  It came over me after he was gone that that, maybe, was what he came for—­the child.  Someone might have put him on to take her from me—­some society.  Oh, I was at my wits’ end, sir! for, you see, she is all I have—­all—­all!  Then I made up my mind to go and see him.  Bad as he is, he wouldn’t have let them do it.  Oh, I would have begged and prayed to him on my knees for that.”

She stopped for a moment, hectic and panting.  She pressed both hands against her breast, as though she sought composure.  Then she continued: 

“It was all a mistake, you know, my being shown in there to-night!  I would never have sought her out myself, being where she is.  Oh, I have my pride!  It was the servant’s mistake:  he took me for a fitter, no doubt, from one of the big dressmakers.  Perhaps there was one expected, I don’t know.  But I didn’t think of that when I came in and found her sitting there, so proud and soft.  It all came over me—­how badly he had used me, and little Meg there at home, and hard Death coming on me—­and I told her.  It seemed quite natural then, as though I had come for that, just for that and nothing else, though, Heaven knows, it was never in my mind before.  I was sorry afterwards.  Yes, before you came in with him I was sorry.  It wasn’t as if I owed her any grudge.  How could she have known?  She is an innocent young thing, after all—­younger than I ever was—­for all her fine dresses and her grand ladyish way.  It was like striking a bit of a child....  God forgive him,” she added half hysterically, “if he uses her as bad as me!”

Rainham’s hand stole to his side, and for a moment he averted his head.  When he turned to her again she was uncertain whether it was more than a pang of sharp physical pain, such as she well knew herself, which had so suddenly blanched his lips.

“For pity’s sake, girl,” he whispered, “be silent.”

She considered him for a moment silently in the elusive light, that matched the mental twilight in which she viewed his mood.  His expression puzzled, evaded her; and she could not have explained the pity which he aroused.

“I am sorry,” she broke out again, moved by an impulse which she did not comprehend.  “You did it for her.”

“Oh, for her!  What does it matter since it is done?  Say that it was an accident—­a folly—­that I am sorry too.”

“No,” said the girl softly; “you are glad.”

He shrugged his shoulders with increasing weariness, an immense desire to have the subject ended and put away with forgotten things.

“I am glad, then.  Have it as you like.”

But she resumed with a pertinacity which his irritated nerves found malignant.