--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 tomorrow 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 paralysed 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.

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Kindly time had withdrawn the foregoing event three days from the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 difficult to arouse her so much
as to say a few sentences. When questioned she had replied that she
was pretty well.

Their trip, as such, had been something of a failure. They had gone
on as far as Falmouth, but here he had given way to her entreaties
to return home. This they could not very well do without repassing
through Pen-zephyr, at which place they had now again arrived.

In the train she had seen a weekly local paper, and read there a
paragraph detailing the inquest on Charles. It was added that the
funeral was to take place at his native town of Redrutin on Friday.

After reading this she had shown no reluctance to enter the fatal
neighbourhood of the tragedy, only stipulating that they should
take their rest at a different lodging from the first; and now
comparatively braced up and calm--indeed a cooler creature altogether
than when last in the town, she said to David that she wanted to walk
out for a while, as they had plenty of time on their hands.

'To a shop as usual, I suppose, mee deer?'

'Partly for shopping,' she said. 'And it will be best for you, dear,
to stay in after trotting about so much, and h