ors: and, as for
his money, I didn't ask for it and I don't want it. I'll go back home
to-morrow morning. I will--indeed, I will. I'll bear this torment no
longer."

So saying, with many gasps and gulps, breaking at last into a burst of
weeping, she covered her face with both hands and flounced out of the
room. Jenny watched her go, then listened to the sobs that came from the
other side of the door, and said beneath her breath, "Let her cry, poor
girl. The crying has to be done by somebody, and it might as well be
she. Crying is good for a woman sometimes, but when a man cries it hurts
so much."

Half an hour later, as Jenny was leaving the room for dinner, she heard
Mrs. Quiggin telling Peggy Quine to ask at the office for her bill, and
to order a carriage to be ready at the door for her at eleven o'clock in
the morning.

When the first burst of her vexation was spent Mrs. Quiggin made a
secret and startling discovery. The man whom Jenny Crow had stumbled
upon, first on the Head and afterward on the Laxey coach, could be no
one in the world but her own husband. A certain shadowy suspicion of
this had floated hazily before her mind at the beginning, but she had
dismissed the idea and forgotten it. Now she felt so sure of it that it
was beyond contempt of question. So the Manx sailor in whom Jenny had
found so much to admire--the simple, brave, manly, generous, natural
soul, all fresh air and by rights all sunshine--was no other than
Capt'n Davy Quiggin! That thought brought the hot blood tingling to Mrs.
Quiggin's cheeks with sensations of exquisite delight, and never before
had her husband seemed so fine in her own eyes as now, when she saw
him so noble in the eyes of another. But close behind this delicious
reflection, like the green blight at the back of the apple blossom, lay
a withering and cankering thought. The Manx sailor's wife--she who had
so behaved that it was impossible for him to live with her--she who was
a cat, a shrew, a nagger, a thankless wretch, a piece of human flint,
a creature that should be put down by the law as it puts down biting
dogs--she whose whole selfish body was not worth the tip of his little
finger--was no one else than herself!

Then came another burst of weeping, but this time the tears were of
shame, not of vexation, and they washed away every remaining evil humor
and left the vision clear. She had been in the wrong, she was judged out
of her own mouth; but she had no intentio