id it happen? Oh, _how_ did it happen?'

'I'll come and tell you all about it. Better put the boy to bed
again, hadn't you?'

When she had recovered her senses Emmeline took this advice, and,
leaving the nurse by the child's cot, went down to survey the ruin
of her property. It was a sorry sight. Where she had left a
reception-room such as any suburban lady in moderate circumstances
might be proud of; she now beheld a mere mass of unrecognisable
furniture, heaped on what had once been a carpet, amid dripping
walls and under a grimed ceiling.

'Oh! Oh!' She all but sank before the horror of the spectacle. Then,
in a voice of fierce conviction, 'She did it! _She_ did it! It was
because I told her to leave. I _know_ she did it on purpose!'

Mumford closed the door of the room, shutting out Cobb and the cook
and the housemaid. He repeated the story Cobb had told him, and
quietly urged the improbability of his wife's explanation. Miss
Derrick, he pointed out, was lying prostrate from severe burns; the
fire must have been accidental, but the accident, to be sure, was
extraordinary enough. Thereupon Mrs. Mumford's wrath turned against
Cobb. What business had such a man--a low-class savage--in _her_
drawing-room? He must have come knowing that she and her husband
were away for the evening.

'You can question him, if you like,' said Mumford. 'He's out there.'

Emmeline opened the door, and at once heard a cry of pain from
upstairs. Mumford, also hearing it, and seeing Cobb's
misery-stricken face by the light of the hall lamp, whispered to his
wife:

'Hadn't you better go up, dear? Dr. Billings may think it strange.'

It was much wiser to urge this consideration than to make a direct
plea for mercy. Emmeline did not care to have it reported that
selfish distress made her indifferent to the sufferings of a friend
staying in her house. But she could not pass Cobb without addressing
him severely.

'So _you_ are the cause of this!'

'I am, Mrs. Mumford, and I can only say that I'll do my best to make
good the damage to your house.'

'Make good I fancy you have strange ideas of the value of the
property destroyed.'

Insolence was no characteristic of Mrs. Mumford. But calamity had
put her beside herself; she spoke, not in her own person, but as a
woman whose carpets, curtains and bric-a-brac have
ignominiously perished.

'I'll make it good,' Cobb repeated humbly, 'however long it takes
me. And don't be angry with th