you your niece is to all intents and purposes a
murderess, a double murderess," cried Mrs. Morrison. "Not only has she
the woman's murder to answer for, but the ruined soul of the murderer
as well."

Upon which there was a loud shout of "Hence! Hence!" and a great
slamming of the street door.

For some time after this Priscilla heard fevered walking about in her
parlour and sounds as of many and muffled imprecations; then, when
they had grown a little more intermittent, careful footsteps came up
her stairs, footsteps so careful, so determined not to disturb, that
the stairs cracked and wheezed more than they had ever yet been known
to do. Arrived at the top they paused outside her door, and Priscilla,
checking her sobs, could hear how Fritzing stood there wrestling with
his body's determination to breathe too loud. He stood there listening
for what seemed to her an eternity. She almost screamed at last as the
minutes passed and she knew he was still there, motionless, listening.
After a long while he went away again with the same anxious care to
make no noise, and she, with a movement of utter abandonment to woe,
turned over and cried herself sick.

Till evening she lay there alone, and then the steps came up again,
accompanied this time by the tinkle of china and spoons. Priscilla was
sitting at the window looking on to the churchyard, staring into the
dark with its swaying branches and few faint stars, and when she heard
him outside the door listening again in anxious silence she got up and
opened it.

Fritzing held a plate of food in one hand and a glass of milk in the
other. The expression on his face was absurdly like that of a mother
yearning over a sick child. "_Mein liebes Kind_--_mein liebes Kind_,"
he stammered when she came out, so woebegone, so crushed, so utterly
unlike any Priscilla of any one of her moods that he had ever seen
before. Her eyes were red, her eyelids heavy with tears, her face was
pinched and narrower, the corners of her mouth had a most piteous
droop, her very hair, pushed back off her forehead, seemed sad, and
hung in spiritless masses about her neck and ears. "_Mein liebes
Kind_," stammered poor Fritzing; and his hand shook so that he upset
some of the milk.

Priscilla leaned against the door-post. She was feeling sick and
giddy. "How dreadful this is," she murmured, looking at him with
weary, woeful eyes.

"No, no--all will be well," said Fritzing, striving to be brisk.
"Drink