"Do you know who that person was?"
"Mrs. Rawlins," was the ready answer.
"I think," said Mr. Grey to the accused, "that you must perceive that,
with such coincidence of testimony as I have here, I have no alternative
but to commit you for the summer assizes."
Mauleverer murmured something about an action for false imprisonment,
but he did not make it clear, and he was evidently greatly crestfallen.
He had no doubt hoped to brazen out his assumed character sufficiently
to disconcert Mr. Beauchamp's faith in his own memory, and though he
had carried on the same game after being confronted with Maria, it was
already becoming desperate. He had not reckoned upon her deserting
his cause even for her own sake, and the last chance of employing her
antecedents to discredit her testimony, had been overthrown by Rose's
innocent witness to their mutual relations, a remembrance which had been
burnt in on her childish memory by the very means taken to secure her
silence. When the depositions were read over, their remarkable and
independent accordance was most striking; Mrs. Dench had already been
led away by the minister, in time to catch her train, just when her sobs
of indignation at the deception were growing too demonstrative, and the
policeman resumed the charge of Maria Hatherton.
Little Rose looked up to her, saying, "Please, Aunt Ailie, may I speak
to her?"
Alison had been sitting restless and perplexed between impulses of pity
and repulsion, and doubts about the etiquette of the justice room;
but her heart yearned over the girl she had cherished, and she signed
permission to Rose, whose timidity had given way amid excitement and
encouragement.
"Please, Maria," she said, "don't be angry with me for telling; I never
did till Colonel Keith asked me, and I could not help it. Will you kiss
me and forgive me as you used?"
The hard fierce eyes, that had not wept over the child's coffin, filled
with tears.
"Oh, Miss Rose, Miss Rose, do not come near me. Oh, if I had minded
you--and your aunts--" And the pent-up misery of the life that had
fallen lower and lower since the first step in evil, found its course
in a convulsive sob and shriek, so grievous that Alison was thankful for
Colin's promptitude in laying hold of Rose, and leading her out of the
room before him. Alison felt obliged to follow, yet could not bear to
leave Maria to policemen and prison warders.
"Maria, poor Maria, I am so sorry for you, I will try to come and see
you--"
But her hand was seized with an imperative, "Ailie, you must come, they
are all waiting for you."
How little had she thought her arm would ever be drawn into that arm, so
unheeded by both.