Bertha, you don’t think she’ll hang about the house, and lie in wait for me, to be revenged?  We must tell the policeman to look out for her.  I’m sure I shall never venture to go out alone, and if you leave me in the house with a new servant, even for an hour, I must be in a room with the door locked.  My nerves will never recover from this shock.  Oh, if you knew how ill I feel!  I’ll have a cup of tea, and then go straight to bed.”

Whilst she was refreshing herself, she spoke again of Mr. Jollyman.

“Do you think I ought to have pressed him to stay, dear?  I didn’t feel sure.”

“No, no, you were quite right not to do so,” replied Bertha.  “He of course understood that it was better for us to be alone.”

“I thought he would.  Really, for a grocer, he is so very gentlemanly.”

“That’s not surprising, mother.”

“No, no; I’m always forgetting that he isn’t a grocer by birth.  I think, Bertha, it will only be right to ask him to come to tea some day before long.”

Bertha reflected, a half-smile about her lips.

“Certainly,” she said, “if you would like to.”

“I really should.  He was so very kind to me.  And perhaps—­what do you think?—­ought we to invite him in his proper name?”

“No, I think not,” answered Bertha, after a moment’s reflection.  “We are not supposed to know anything about that.”

“To be sure not.—­Oh, that dreadful creature.  I see her eyes, glaring at me, like a tiger’s.  Fifty times at least did she chase me round this table.  I thought I should have dropped with exhaustion; and if I had, one blow of that poker would have finished me.  Never speak to me of servants, Bertha.  Engage any one you like, but do, do be careful to make inquiries about her.  I shall never wish even to know her name; I shall never look at her face; I shall never speak a word to her.  I leave all the responsibility to you, dear.  And now, help me upstairs.  I’m sure ’I could never get up alone.  I tremble in every limb—­”

CHAPTER 43

Warburton’s mother was dead.  The first effect upon him of the certainty that she could not recover from the unconsciousness in which he found her when summoned by Jane’s telegram, was that of an acute remorse; it pierced him to the heart that she should have abandoned the home of her life-time, for the strangeness and discomfort of the new abode, and here have fallen, stricken by death —­the cause of it, he himself, he so unworthy of the least sacrifice.  He had loved her; but what assurance had he been wont to give her of his love?  Through many and many a year it was much if he wrote at long intervals a hurried letter.  How seldom had he cared to go down to St. Neots, and, when there, how soon had he felt impatient of the little restraints imposed upon him by his mother’s ways and prejudices.  Yet not a moment had she hesitated, ill and aged, when, at so great a cost to herself, it seemed possible to make life a little easier for him.  This reproach was the keenest pain with which nature had yet visited him.