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I have already hinted that Mrs. Tretherick was deficient in a sense of humor. Perhaps it was for this reason that this whole scene affected her most unpleasantly; and the conclusion sent the blood tingling to her cheek. There was something, too, inconceivably lonely in the situation. The unfurnished vacant room, the half- lights, the monstrous doll, whose very size seemed to give a pathetic significance to its speechlessness, the smallness of the one animate, self-centered figure–all these touched more or less deeply the half-poetic sensibilities of the woman. She could not help utilizing the impression as she stood there, and thought what a fine poem might be constructed from this material if the room were a little darker, the child lonelier–say, sitting beside a dead mother’s bier, and the wind wailing in the turrets. And then she suddenly heard footsteps at the door below, and recognized the tread of the colonel’s cane.

She flew swiftly down the stairs, and encountered the colonel in the hall. Here she poured into his astonished ear a voluble and exaggerated statement of her discovery, and indignant recital of her wrongs. “Don’t tell me the whole thing wasn’t arranged beforehand; for I know it was!” she almost screamed. “And think,” she added, “of the heartlessness of the wretch, leaving his own child alone here in that way.”

“It’s a blank shame!” stammered the colonel, without the least idea of what he was talking about. In fact, utterly unable as he was to comprehend a reason for the woman’s excitement, with his estimate of her character, I fear he showed it more plainly than he intended. He stammered, expanded his chest, looked stern, gallant, tender, but all unintelligently. Mrs. Tretherick, for an instant, experienced a sickening doubt of the existence of natures in perfect affinity.

“It’s of no use,” said Mrs. Tretherick with sudden vehemence, in answer to some inaudible remark of the colonel’s, and withdrawing her hand from the fervent grasp of that ardent and sympathetic man. “It’s of no use: my mind is made up. You can send for my trunk as soon as you like; but I shall stay here, and confront that man with the proof of his vileness. I will put him face to face with his infamy.”

I do not know whether Colonel Starbottle thoroughly appreciated the convincing proof of Tretherick’s unfaithfulness and malignity afforded by the damning evidence of the existence of Tretherick’s own child in his own house. He was dimly aware, however, of some unforeseen obstacle to the perfect expression of the infinite longing of his own sentimental nature. But, before he could say anything, Carry appeared on the landing above them, looking timidly, and yet half-critically, at the pair.

“That’s her,” said Mrs. Tretherick excitedly. In her deepest emotions, in either verse or prose, she rose above a consideration of grammatical construction.

“Ah!” said the colonel, with a sudden assumption of parental affection and jocularity that was glaringly unreal and affected. “Ah! pretty little girl, pretty little girl! How do you do? How are you? You find yourself pretty well, do you, pretty little girl?” The colonel’s impulse also was to expand his chest and swing his cane, until it occurred to him that this action might be ineffective with a child of six or seven. Carry, however, took no immediate notice of this advance, but further discomposed the chivalrous colonel by running quickly to Mrs. Tretherick and hiding herself, as if for protection, in the folds of her gown. Nevertheless, the colonel was not vanquished. Falling back into an attitude of respectful admiration, he pointed out a marvelous resemblance to the “Madonna and Child.” Mrs. Tretherick simpered, but did not dislodge Carry as before. There was an awkward pause for a moment; and then Mrs. Tretherick, motioning significantly to the child, said in a whisper: “Go now. Don’t come here again, but meet me tonight at the hotel.” She extended her hand: the colonel bent over it gallantly and, raising his hat, the next moment was gone.