They're
playin' wi' me. They let me sim to run free, because they know they
can 'aarve me when they want me."
With such thoughts, he went down-stairs of a morning to talk jovially
with Ridgett, to chaff Miss Yorke; and with the thoughts unchanged he
came up-stairs to glower at Mavis across the breakfast-table.
His thoughts in regard to Mavis were extraordinarily complicated. At
first he had been horribly afraid of her--dreading their meeting as a
crisis, a turning-point, an awful bit of touch-and-go work. It seemed
that she of all people would be the one to suspect the truth. When she
heard of the man's death, surely the idea _must_ have flashed into her
mind: "This is Will's doing." But then perhaps, when no facts appeared
to support the idea, she might have abandoned it. Nevertheless it
would readily come flashing back again--and again, and again.
To his delight, however, he saw that she did not suspect now, and
there was nothing to show that she ever had suspected. And he thought
in the midst of his great relief: "How stupid she is really. Any other
woman would have put two and two together. But she is a stupid woman.
Stupidity is the key-note to her character--and it furnishes the
explanation of half her wrong-doing.
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