Neither she nor Jane Cross had gone out at all that day. Monday was rather a busy day with them, for they generally did a bit of washing. After tea, which they took between four and five o’clock, they went up to their bedroom, it being livelier there than in the kitchen, the window looking down the side road. Matilda sat down to write a letter to her brother, who lived at a distance; Jane Cross sat at the window doing a job of sewing. They sat there all the evening, writing, working, and sometimes talking. At dusk, Jane remarked that it was getting blind man’s holiday, and that she should go on downstairs and lay the supper. Upon that, Matilda finished her letter quickly, folded and directed it, and followed her down. Jane had not yet laid the cloth, but was then taking it out of the drawer. “You go and fetch the beer, Matilda,” she said: and Matilda was glad to do so. “You can’t go that way: I have locked the gate,” Jane called out, seeing Matilda turning towards the back; accordingly she went out at the front door, leaving it on the latch. Such was her account; and I have given it almost verbatim.
“On the latch,” repeated the policeman, taking up the words. “Does that mean that you left it open?”
“I drew it quite to, so that it looked as if it were shut; it was a heavy door, and would keep so,” was Matilda’s answer. “I did it, not to give Jane the trouble to open it to me. When I got back I found it shut and could not get in.”
The policeman mused. “You say it was Jane Cross who locked the back door in the wall?”
“Yes,” said Matilda. “She had locked it before I got downstairs. We liked to lock that door early, because it could be opened from the outside—while the front door could not be.”
“And she had not put these things on the table when you went out for the beer?”—pointing to the dishes.
“No: she was only then putting the cloth. As I turned round from taking the beer-jug from its hook, the fling she gave the cloth caused the air to whiffle in my face like a wind. She had not begun to reach out the dishes.”
“How long were you away?”
“I don’t know exactly,” she answered, with a moan. “Rather longer than usual, because I took my letter to the post before going to the Swan.”
“It was about ten minutes,” I interposed. “I was at the window next door, and saw Matilda go out and come back.”
“Ten minutes!” repeated the policeman. “Quite long enough for some ruffian to come in and fling her over the stairs.”
“But who would do it?” asked Matilda, looking up at him with her poor pale face.
“Ah, that’s the question; that’s what we must find out,” said Knapp. “Was the kitchen just as it was when you left it?”
“Yes—except that she had put the bread and cheese on the table. And the glasses, and knives,” added the girl, looking round at the said table, which remained as we had found it, “but not the plates.”
“Well now, to go to something else: Did she bring her work-basket downstairs with her from the bedroom when she remarked to you that she would go and put the supper on?”
“No, she did not.”
“You are sure of that?”
“Yes. She left the basket on the chair in front of her where it had been standing. She just got up and shook the threads from off her gown, and went on down. When I left the room the basket was there; I saw it. And I think,” added the girl, with a great sob, “I think that while laying the supper she must have gone upstairs again to fetch the basket, and must have fallen against the banisters with fright, and overbalanced herself.”
“Fright at what?” asked Knapp.
Matilda shivered. Susan whispered to him that they were afraid at night of seeing the ghost of Mr. Edmund Peahern.
The man glanced keenly at Matilda for a minute. “Did you ever see it?” he asked.
“No,” she shuddered. “But there are strange noises, and we think it is in the house.”
“Well,” said Knapp, coughing to hide a comical smile, “ghosts don’t tear pieces out of gowns—that ever I heard of. I should say it was something worse than a ghost that has been here to-night. Had this poor girl any sweetheart?”
“No,” said Matilda.
“Have you one?”
“No.”
“Except Owen the milkman.”
A red streak flashed into Matilda’s cheeks. I knew Owen: he was Mrs. Blair’s milkman also.
“I think Owen must be your sweetheart or hers,” went on Knapp. “I’ve seen him, often enough, talking and laughing with you both when bringing the afternoon’s milk round. Ten minutes at a stretch he has stayed in this garden, when he need not have been as many moments.”
“There has been no harm: and it’s nothing to anybody,” said Matilda.
The key of the front door was searched for, high and low; but it could not be found. Whoever locked the door, must have made off with the key. But for that, and for the evidences of the scuffle above and the pieces torn out of the gown, we should have thought Matilda’s opinion was correct: that Jane Cross had gone upstairs for her basket, and through some wretched accident had pitched over the balustrades. Matilda could not relinquish the notion.
“It was only a week ago that ever was—a week ago this very day—that Jane Cross nearly fell over there. We were both running upstairs, trying in sport which should get first into our bedroom; and, in jostling one another on the landing, she all but overbalanced herself. I caught hold of her to save her. It’s true—if it were the last word I had to speak.”
Matilda broke down, with a dreadful fit of sobbing. Altogether she struck me as being about as excitable a young woman as one could meet in a summer day’s journey.
Nothing more could be made out of it this evening. Jane Cross had met her death, and some evil or other must have led to it. The police took possession of the house for the night: and Matilda, out of compassion, was brought to ours. To describe the Mater’s shock and Mary Blair’s, when they heard the news, would be beyond me.
All sorts of conjectures arose in the neighbourhood. The most popular belief was that some person must have perceived the front door open, and, whether with a good or a bad intention, entered the house; that he must have stolen upstairs, met Jane Cross on the top landing, and flung her down in a scuffle. That he must then have let himself out at the front door and locked it after him.
Against this theory there were obstacles. From the time of Matilda’s leaving the house till her return, certainly not more than ten minutes had elapsed, perhaps not quite as much, and this was a very short space of time for what had been done in it. Moreover the chances were that I, sitting at the next window, should have seen any one going in or out; though it was not of course certain. I had got up once to ring the bell, and stayed a minute or two away from the window, talking with Mary Blair and the Mater.
Some people thought the assassin (is it too much to call him so?) had been admitted by Jane Cross herself; or he might have been in hiding in the garden before she locked the door. In short, the various opinions would fill a volume.
But suspicion fell chiefly upon one person—and that was Thomas Owen the milkman. Though, perhaps, “suspicion” is too strong a word to give to it—I ought rather to say “doubt.” These Owens were originally from Wales, very respectable people. The milk business was their own; and, since the father’s death, which happened only a few months before, the son had carried it on in conjunction with his mother. He was a young man of three or four and twenty, with a fresh colour and open countenance, rather superior in manners and education. The carrying out the milk himself was a temporary arrangement, the boy employed for it being ill. That he had often lingered at No. 7, laughing with the two young women, was well known; he had also been seen to accost them in the street. Only the previous day, he and Matilda had stayed talking in the churchyard after morning service when everybody else had left it; and he had walked up nearly as far as Seaboard Terrace with Jane Cross in the evening. A notion existed that he had entered the house on the Monday evening, for who else was it likely to have been, cried everybody. Which was, of course, logic. At last a rumour arose—arose on the Tuesday—that Owen had been seen to leave the house at dusk on the fatal evening; that this could be proved. If so, it looked rather black. I was startled, for I had liked the man.
The next day, Wednesday, the key was found. A gardener who did up the gardens of the other end house, No. 1, every Wednesday, was raking the ground underneath some dwarf pines that grew close against the front railings, and raked out a big door-key. About a dozen people came rushing off with it to No. 7.
It was the missing key. It fitted into the door at once, locked and unlocked it. When the villain had made his way from the house after doing the mischief, he must have flung the key over amidst the pines, thinking no doubt it would lie hidden there.
The coroner and jury assembled; but they could not make more of the matter than we had made. Jane Cross had died of the fall down the well-staircase, which had broken her neck; and it was pretty evident she had been flung down. Beyond the one chief and fatal injury, she was not harmed in any way; not by so much as a scratch. Matilda, whose surname turned out to be Valentine, having got over the first shock, gave her testimony with subdued composure. She was affected at parts of it, and said she would have saved Jane Cross’s life with her own: and no one could doubt that she spoke the truth. She persisted in asserting her opinion that there had been no scuffle, in spite of appearances; but that the girl had been terrified in some way and had accidentally fallen over.
When Matilda was done with, Thomas Owen took her place. He was all in black, having dressed himself to come to the inquest and wearing mourning for his father; and I must say, looking at him now, you’d never have supposed he carried out milk-pails.
Yes, he had known the poor young woman in question, he readily said in answer to questions; had been fond of chaffing with the two girls a bit, but nothing more. Meant nothing by it, nothing serious. Respected both of them; regarded them as perfectly well-conducted young women.—Was either of them his sweetheart? Certainly not. Had not courted either of them. Never thought of either of them as his future wife: should not consider a servant eligible for that position—at least, his mother would not. Of the two, he had liked Jane Cross the best. Did not know anything whatever of the circumstances attending the death; thought it a most deplorable calamity, and was never more shocked in his life than when he heard of it.
“Is there any truth in the report that you were at the house on Monday evening?” asked the coroner.
“There is no truth in it.”
“I see him come out o’ No. 7: I see him come out o’ the side door in the garden wall,” burst forth a boy’s earnest voice from the back of the room.
“You saw me not come out of it,” quietly replied Thomas Owen, turning round to see who it was that had spoken. “Oh, it is you, is it, Bob Jackson! Yes, you came running round the corner just as I turned from the door.”
“You were there, then?” cried the coroner.
“No, sir. At the door, yes; that’s true enough; but I was not inside it. What happened was this: on Monday I had some business at a farmhouse near Munpler, and set out to walk over there early in the evening. In passing down the side road by No. 7, I saw the two maids at the top window. One of them—I think it was Jane Cross—called out to ask me in a joking kind of way whether I was about to pay them a visit; I answered, not then, but I would as I came back if they liked. Accordingly, in returning, I rang the bell. It was not answered, and I rang again with a like result. Upon that, I went straight home to my milk books, and did not stir out again, as my mother can prove. That is the truth, sir, on my oath; and the whole truth.”
“What time was this?”
“I am not quite sure. It was getting dusk.”
“Did you see anything of the young women this second time?”
“Not anything.”
“Or hear anything?—Any noise?”
“None whatever. I supposed that they would not come to the door to me because it was late: I thought nothing else. I declare, sir, that this is all I know of the matter.”
There was a pause when he concluded. Knapp, the policeman, and another one standing by his side, peered at Owen from under their eyebrows, as if they did not put implicit faith in his words: and the coroner recalled Matilda Valentine.
She readily confirmed the statement of his having passed along the side road, and Jane Cross’s joking question to him. But she denied having heard him ring on his return, and said the door-bell had not rung at all that night. Which would seem to prove that Owen must have rung during the time she had gone out for the beer.
So, you perceive, the inquest brought forth no more available light, and had to confess itself baffled.
“A fine termination this is to our pleasure,” cried the Squire, gloomily. “I don’t like mysteries, Johnny. And of all the mysteries I have come across in my life, the greatest mystery is this at No. 7.”
THE MYSTERY AT NUMBER SEVEN
II.—OWEN, THE MILKMAN
It was a grand sea to-day: one of the grandest that we had seen at Saltwater. The waves were dancing and sparkling like silver; the blue of the sky was deeper than a painter’s ultramarine. But to us, looking on it from Mrs. Blair’s house in Seaboard Terrace, its brightness and beauty were dimmed.
“For you see, Johnny,” observed the Squire to me, his face and tone alike gloomy—outward things take their impress from the mind—“with that dreadful affair at the next door jaundicing one’s thoughts, the sea might as well be grey as blue, and the sky lowering with thunder-clouds. I repeat that I don’t like mysteries: they act on me like a fit of indigestion.”
The affair just was a mystery; to us, as to all Saltwater. More than a week had elapsed since the Monday evening when it took place, and poor Jane Cross now lay buried in the windy graveyard. On this said Monday evening, the two servant maids, Jane Cross and Matilda Valentine (left in the house, No. 7, Seaboard Terrace, during the absence of the family abroad), had been pursuing their ordinary occupations. While Jane Cross was laying the cloth for supper in the kitchen, Matilda went out to fetch the usual pint of ale. On her return she could not get in. When admittance was obtained, Jane Cross lay dead in the hall, having fallen down the well of the staircase. Evidences of a scuffle on the upper landing could be traced, making it apparent that the fall was not accidental; that she had been flung down. Some doubt attached to Owen, the milkman, partly from his previous intimacy with the girls, chiefly because he had been seen leaving the back door of the house somewhere about the time it must have occurred. What Owen said was, that he had rung twice at the door, but his ring was not answered.
Matilda was to be pitied. The two young women had cared a good deal for one another, and the shock to Matilda was serious. The girl, now staying in our house, had worn a half-dazed look ever since, and avoided No. 7 as though it had the plague. Superstition in regard to the house had already been rife in both the servants’ minds, in consequence of the unhappy death in it of their master’s son, Edmund Peahern, some weeks back: and if Matilda had been afraid of seeing one ghost before (as she had been) she would now undoubtedly expect to see two of them.
On this same morning, as I stood with the Squire looking at the sea from the drawing-room window of No. 6, Matilda came in. Her large dark eyes had lost their former sparkle, her clear olive skin its freshness. She asked leave to speak to Mrs. Todhetley: and the Mater—who sat at the table adding up some bills, for our sojourn at Saltwater was drawing towards its close—told her, in a kindly tone, to speak on.
“I am making bold to ask you, ma’am, whether you could help me to find a place in London,” began Matilda, standing between the door and the table in her black dress. “I know, ma’am, you don’t live in London, but a long way off it; Mrs. Blair has told me so, Master Johnny Ludlow also: but I thought perhaps you knew people there, and might be able to hear of something.”
The Mater looked at Matilda without answering, and then round at us. Rather strange it was, a coincidence in a small way, that we had had a letter from London from Miss Deveen that morning, which had concluded with these lines of postscript: “Do you chance to know of any nice, capable young woman in want of a situation? One of my housemaids is going to leave.”
Naturally this occurred to the Mater’s mind when Matilda spoke. “What kind of situation do you wish for?” she asked.
“As housemaid, ma’am, or parlour-maid. I can do my duty well in either.”
“But now, my girl,” spoke up the Squire, turning from the window, “why need you leave Saltwater? You’d never like London after it. This is a clear, fresh, health-giving place, with beautiful sands and music on them all day long; London is nothing but smoke and fogs.”
Matilda shook her head. “I could not stay here, sir.”
“Nonsense, girl. Of course what has happened has happened, and it’s very distressing; and you, of all people, must feel it so: but you will forget it in time. If you don’t care to go back to No. 7 before Mr. and Mrs. Peahern come home–”
“I can never go back to No. 7, sir,” she interrupted, a vehemence that seemed born of terror in her subdued voice. “Never in this world. I would rather die.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” said the Squire, impatiently. “There’s nothing the matter with No. 7. What has happened in it won’t happen again.”
“It is an unlucky house, sir; a haunted house,” she contended with suppressed emotion. “And it’s true that I would rather die outright than go back to live in it; for the terror of being there would slowly kill me. And so, ma’am,” she added quickly to Mrs. Todhetley, evidently wishing to escape the subject, “I should like to go away altogether from Saltwater; and if you can help me to hear of a place in London, I shall be very grateful.”
“I will consider of it, Matilda,” was the answer. And when the girl had left the room the Mater asked us what we thought about recommending her to Miss Deveen. We saw no reason against it—not but that the Squire put the girl down as an idiot on the subject of haunted houses—and Miss Deveen was written to.
The upshot was, that on the next Saturday Matilda bade farewell to Saltwater and departed for Miss Deveen’s, the Squire sarcastically assuring her that that house had no ghosts in it. We should be leaving, ourselves, the following Tuesday.
But, before that day came, it chanced that I saw Owen, the milkman. It was on the Sunday afternoon. I had taken little Joe Blair for a walk across the fields as far as Munpler (their Montpellier-by-Sea, you know), and in returning met Thomas Owen. He wore his black Sunday clothes, and looked a downright fine fellow, as usual. There was something about the man I could not help liking, in spite of the doubt attaching to him.
“So Matilda Valentine is gone, sir,” he observed, after we had exchanged a few sentences.
“Yes, she went yesterday,” I answered, putting my back against the field fence, while young Joe went careering about in chase of a yellow butterfly. “And for my part, I don’t wonder at the girl’s not liking to stay at Saltwater. At least, in Seaboard Terrace.”
“I was told this morning that Mr. and Mrs. Peahern were on their way home,” he continued.
“Most likely they are. They’d naturally want to look into the affair for themselves.”
“And I hope with all my heart they will be able to get some light out of it,” returned Owen, warmly. “I mean to do my best to bring out the mystery, sir; and I sha’n’t rest till it’s done.”
His words were fair, his tone was genuine. If it was indeed himself who had been the chief actor in the tragedy, he carried it off well. I hardly knew what to think. It is true I had taken a bit of a fancy to the man, according to my usual propensity to take a fancy, or the contrary; but I did not know much about him, and not anything of his antecedents. As he spoke to me now, his tone was marked, rather peculiar. It gave me a notion that he wanted to say more.
“Have you any idea that you will be able to trace it out?”
“For my own sake I should like to get the matter cleared up,” he added, not directly answering my question. “People are beginning to turn the cold shoulder my way: one woman asked me to my face yesterday whether I did it. No, I told her, I did not do it, but I’d try and find out who did.”
“You are sure you heard and saw nothing suspicious that night when you rang the bell and could not get in, Owen?”
“Not then, sir; no. I saw no light in the house and heard no noise.”
“You have not any clue to go by, then?”
“Not much, sir, yet. But I can’t help thinking somebody else has.”
“Who is that?”
“Matilda.”
“Matilda!” I repeated, in amazement. “Surely you can’t suspect that she—that she was a party to any deed so cruel and wicked!”
“No, no, sir, I don’t mean that; the young women were too good friends to harm one another: and whatever took place, took place while Matilda was out of the house. But I can’t help fancying that she knows, or suspects, more of the matter than she will say. In short, that she is screening some one.”
To me it seemed most unlikely. “Why do you judge so, Owen?”
“By her manner, sir. Not by much else. But I’ll tell you something that I saw. On the previous Wednesday when I left the afternoon milk at that tall house just beyond Seaboard Terrace, the family lodging there told me to call in the evening for the account, as they were leaving the next day. Accordingly I went; and was kept waiting so long before they paid me that it was all but dark when I came out. Just as I was passing the back door at No. 7, it was suddenly drawn open from the inside, and a man stood in the opening, whispering with one of the girls. She was crying, for I heard her sobs, and he kissed her and came out, and the door was hastily shut. He was an ill-looking man; so far at least as his clothes went; very shabby. His face I did not see, for he pulled his slouching round hat well over his brows as he walked away rapidly, and the black beard he wore covered his mouth and chin.”
“Which of the maids was it?”
“I don’t know, sir. The next day I chaffed them a bit about it, but they both declared that nobody had been there but the watchmaker, Mr. Renninson, who goes every Wednesday to wind up the clocks, and that it must have been him I saw, for he was late that evening. I said no more; it was no business of mine; but the man I saw go out was just about as much like Renninson as he was like me.”
“And do you fancy–”
“Please wait a minute, sir,” he interrupted, “I haven’t finished. Last Sunday evening, upon getting home after service, I found I had left my prayer-book in church. Not wishing to lose it, for it was the one my father always used, I went back for it. However, the church was shut up, so I could not get in. It was a fine evening, and I took a stroll round the churchyard. In the corner of it, near to Mr. Edmund Peahern’s tomb, they had buried poor Jane Cross but two days before—you know the spot, sir. Well, on the flat square of earth that covers her grave, stood Matilda Valentine, the greatest picture of distress you can imagine, tears streaming down her cheeks. She dried her eyes when she saw me, and we came away together. Naturally I fell to talking of Jane Cross and the death. ‘I shall do as much as lies in my power to bring it to light,’ I said to Matilda; ‘or people may go on doubting me to the end. And I think the first step must be to find out who the man was that called in upon you the previous Wednesday night.’ Well, sir, with that, instead of making any answering remark as a Christian would, or a rational being, let us say, Matilda gives a smothered shriek and darts away out of the churchyard. I couldn’t make her out; and all in a minute a conviction flashed over me, though I hardly know why, that she knew who was the author of the calamity, and was screening him; or at any rate that she had her suspicions, if she did not actually know. And I think so still, sir.”
I shook my head, not seeing grounds to agree with Owen. He resumed:
“The next morning, between nine and ten, I was in the shop, putting a pint of cream which had been ordered into a can, when to my surprise Matilda walked in, cool and calm. She said she had come to tell me that the man I had seen leave the house was her brother. He had fallen into trouble through having become security for a fellow workman, had had all his things sold up, including his tools, and had walked every step of the way—thirty miles—to ask her if she could help him. She did help him as far as she could, giving him what little money she had by her, and Jane Cross had added ten shillings to it. He had got in only at dusk, she said, had taken some supper with them, and left again afterwards, and that she was letting him out at the gate when I must have been passing it. She did not see me, for her eyes were dim with crying: her heart felt fit to break in saying farewell. That was the truth, she declared, and that her brother had had no more to do with Jane’s death than she or I had; he was away again out of Saltwater the same night he came into it.”
“Well? Did you not believe her?”
“No, sir,” answered Owen, boldly. “I did not. If this was true, why should she have gone off into that smothered shriek in the churchyard when I mentioned him, and rush away in a fright?”
I could not tell. Owen’s words set me thinking.
“I did not know which of the two girls it was who let the man out that Wednesday night, for I did not clearly see; but, sir, the impression on my mind at the moment was, that it was Jane Cross. Jane Cross, and not Matilda. If so, why does she tell me this tale about her brother, and say it was herself?”
“And if it was Jane Cross?”
Owen shook his head. “All sorts of notions occur to me, sir. Sometimes I fancy that the man might have been Jane’s sweetheart, that he might have been there again on the Monday night, and done the mischief in a quarrel; and that Matilda is holding her tongue because it is her brother. Let the truth be what it will, Matilda’s manner convinces me of one thing: that there’s something she is concealing, and that it is half frightening her wits out of her.–You are going to leave Saltwater, I hear, sir,” added the young man in a different tone, “and I am glad to have the opportunity of saying this, for I should not like you to carry away any doubt of me. I’ll bring the matter to light if I can.”
Touching his hat, he walked onwards, leaving my thoughts all in a whirligig.
Was Owen right in drawing these conclusions?—or was he purposely giving a wrong colouring to facts, and seeking craftily to throw suspicion off himself? It was a nice question, one I could make neither top nor tail of. But, looking back to the fatal evening, weighing this point, sifting that, I began to see that Matilda showed more anxiety, more terror, than she need have shown before she knew that any ill had happened. Had she a prevision, as she stood at the door with the jug of ale in her hand, that some evil might have chanced? Did she leave some individual in the house with Jane Cross when she went to the Swan to get the ale?—and was it her brother? Did she leave Owen in the house, and was she screening him?
“Why, Matilda! Is it you?”
It was fourteen months later, and autumn weather, and I had just arrived in London at Miss Deveen’s. My question to Matilda, who came into my dressing-room with some warm water to wash off the travelling dust, was not made in surprise at seeing her, for I supposed she was still in service at Miss Deveen’s, but at seeing the change in her. Instead of the healthy and, so to say, handsome girl known at Saltwater, I saw a worn, weary, anxious-looking shadow, with a feverish fire in her wild dark eyes.
“Have you been ill, Matilda?”
“No, sir, not at all. I am quite well.”
“You have grown very thin.”
“It’s the London air, sir. I think everybody must get thin who lives in it.”
Very civilly and respectfully, but yet with an unmistakable air of reticence, spoke she. Somehow the girl was changed, and greatly changed. Perhaps she had been grieving after Jane Cross? Perhaps the secret of what had happened (if in truth Matilda knew it) lay upon her with too heavy a weight?
“Do you find Matilda a good servant?” I asked of Miss Deveen, later, she and I being alone together.
“A very good servant, Johnny. But she is going to leave me.”
“Is she? Why?”
Miss Deveen only nodded, in answer to the first query, passing over the last. I supposed she did not wish to say.
“I think her so much altered.”
“In what way, Johnny?”
“In looks: looks and manner. She is just a shadow. One might say she had passed through a six months’ fever. And what a curious light there is in her eyes!”
“She has always impressed me with the idea of having some great care upon her. None can mistake that she is a sorrowful woman. I hear that the other servants accuse her of having been ‘crossed in love,’” added Miss Deveen, with a smile.
“She is thinner even than Miss Cattledon.”
“And that, I daresay you think, need not be, Johnny! Miss Cattledon, by the way, is rather hard upon Matilda just now: calls her a ‘demon.’”
“A demon! Why does she?”
“Well, I’ll tell you. Though it is only a little domestic matter, one that perhaps you will hardly care to hear. You must know (to begin with) that Matilda has never made herself sociable with the other servants here; in return they have become somewhat prejudiced against her, and have been ready to play her tricks, tease her, and what not. But you must understand, Johnny, that I knew nothing of the state of affairs below; such matters rarely reach me. My cook, Hall, was especially at war with Matilda: in fact, I believe there was no love lost between the two. The girl’s melancholy—for at times she does seem very melancholy—was openly put down by the rest to the assumption that she must have had some love affair in which the swain had played her false. They were continually worrying her on this score, and it no doubt irritated Matilda; but she rarely retorted, preferring rather to leave them and take refuge in her room.”