Towneley was still in Mrs Jupp’s house when the policeman came.  He had heard a disturbance, and going down to Ernest’s room while Miss Maitland was out of doors, had found him lying, as it were, stunned at the foot of the moral precipice over which he had that moment fallen.  He saw the whole thing at a glance, but before he could take action, the policemen came in and action became impossible.

He asked Ernest who were his friends in London.  Ernest at first wanted not to say, but Towneley soon gave him to understand that he must do as he was bid, and selected myself from the few whom he had named.  “Writes for the stage, does he?” said Towneley.  “Does he write comedy?” Ernest thought Towneley meant that I ought to write tragedy, and said he was afraid I wrote burlesque.  “Oh, come, come,” said Towneley, “that will do famously.  I will go and see him at once.”  But on second thoughts he determined to stay with Ernest and go with him to the police court.  So he sent Mrs Jupp for me.  Mrs Jupp hurried so fast to fetch me, that in spite of the weather’s being still cold she was “giving out,” as she expressed it, in streams.  The poor old wretch would have taken a cab, but she had no money and did not like to ask Towneley to give her some.  I saw that something very serious had happened, but was not prepared for anything so deplorable as what Mrs Jupp actually told me.  As for Mrs Jupp, she said her heart had been jumping out of its socket and back again ever since.

I got her into a cab with me, and we went off to the police station.  She talked without ceasing.

“And if the neighbours do say cruel things about me, I’m sure it ain’t no thanks to him if they’re true.  Mr Pontifex never took a bit o’ notice of me no more than if I had been his sister.  Oh, it’s enough to make anyone’s back bone curdle.  Then I thought perhaps my Rose might get on better with him, so I set her to dust him and clean him as though I were busy, and gave her such a beautiful clean new pinny, but he never took no notice of her no more than he did of me, and she didn’t want no compliment neither, she wouldn’t have taken not a shilling from him, though he had offered it, but he didn’t seem to know anything at all.  I can’t make out what the young men are a-coming to; I wish the horn may blow for me and the worms take me this very night, if it’s not enough to make a woman stand before God and strike the one half on ’em silly to see the way they goes on, and many an honest girl has to go home night after night without so much as a fourpenny bit and paying three and sixpence a week rent, and not a shelf nor cupboard in the place and a dead wall in front of the window.