t was.

For some reason I felt I should know the person. I had a horrid feeling
that it was somebody I had seen before. The name of Monty Cranch was
almost ready on my lips in spite of my old idea, which had never left
me, that I had seen him--at least in this world--for the last time.
Therefore it was almost a surprise to me to find that the man was as far
different from her father as butter from barley. Whoever the man might
be, he was tall and thin and had a white, disagreeable skin and a
nervous way of looking to right and left, holding his chin in his hands.
I never got a good look at his face. But once he turned up his head,
perhaps to look at the house. He had gold teeth--a whole front row of
them! This, perhaps, was the man the messenger boy had described--the
man to whom Mrs. Estabrook was addressing secret communications.
Certainly it was no one I had ever seen, and certainly, too, there was
something in that fleeting glance at the lower part of his face which
made me have no wish to see his ugly countenance again.

His visit, at any rate, set me to thinking more than ever, and that
night as I walked about the dining-room, serving the courses in place of
the maid who was away, I think I felt for the first time a doubt about
my mistress. She had always seemed to me like a creature of heaven, and
as I stood back of her chair, looking down upon those beautiful
shoulders and white arms and head of soft and shining hair, it was hard
to believe she was in some conspiracy of which she had kept her husband
in ignorance with the slyness of a snake. I felt sorry for him. So at
the moment of my first doubt of her, I found that pity--begging your
pardon!--had at last made me ready to forget that I had never liked him
or his cold ways, and ready to forgive the once he laid violent hands on
me. My mistress had not chosen to tell me anything and had acted toward
me as suspicious as if she had believed me capable of meaning evil to
her. She had turned my questions aside and reminded me of my place. I
suppose it was only human nature for me to lose sympathy with her and
begin to have it with the man who sat across the table from her, all in
the dark about the curious and perhaps terrible affairs that were
hanging over his home and always kind and patient and, I may
say,--begging your pardon!--innocent, too! It was during that meal that
I made up my mind to tell him all I knew. It seemed to me the best and
safest course; I wou