't say that I've told ye, please, m'm?
All the linen has been changed, and as the inquest won't be till
to-morrow, after you are gone, she thought you wouldn't know a word of
it, being strangers here.'

The returning footsteps of her husband broke off further narration.
Baptista waved her hand, for she could not speak. The waiting-maid
quickly withdrew, and Mr. Heddegan entered with the smelling salts and
other nostrums.

'Any better?' he questioned.

'I don't like the hotel,' she exclaimed, almost simultaneously. 'I can't
bear it--it doesn't suit me!'

'Is that all that's the matter?' he returned pettishly (this being the
first time of his showing such a mood). 'Upon my heart and life such
trifling is trying to any man's temper, Baptista! Sending me about from
here to yond, and then when I come back saying 'ee don't like the place
that I have sunk so much money and words to get for 'ee. 'Od dang it
all, 'tis enough to--But I won't say any more at present, mee deer,
though it is just too much to expect to turn out of the house now. We
shan't get another quiet place at this time of the evening--every other
inn in the town is bustling with rackety folk of one sort and t'other,
while here 'tis as quiet as the grave--the country, I would say. So bide
still, d'ye hear, and to-morrow we shall be out of the town altogether--as
early as you like.'

The obstinacy of age had, in short, overmastered its complaisance, and
the young woman said no more. The simple course of telling him that in
the adjoining room lay a corpse which had lately occupied their own
might, it would have seemed, have been an effectual one without further
disclosure, but to allude to that subject, however it was disguised, was
more than Heddegan's young wife had strength for. Horror broke her down.
In the contingency one thing only presented itself to her paralyzed
regard--that here she was doomed to abide, in a hideous contiguity to the
dead husband and the living, and her conjecture did, in fact, bear itself
out. That night she lay between the two men she had married--Heddegan on
the one hand, and on the other through the partition against which the
bed stood, Charles Stow.

CHAPTER VI

Kindly time had withdrawn the foregoing event three days from the present
of Baptista Heddegan. It was ten o'clock in the morning; she had been
ill, not in an ordinary or definite sense, but in a state of cold
stupefaction, from which it was diffic