She would have been more wakeful could she have divined the blow
which she had escaped a couple of hours before. Between five and six
o'clock, when she was upstairs in the large bedroom, Mrs. Maldon
had said to her, "Rachel--" and stopped. "Yes, Mrs. Maldon," she had
replied. And Mrs. Maldon had said, "Nothing." Mrs. Maldon had desired
to say, but in words carefully chosen: "Rachel, I've never told you
that Louis Fores began life as a bank clerk, and was dismissed
for stealing money. And even since then his conduct has not been
blameless." Mrs. Maldon had stopped because she could not find the
form of words which would permit her to impart to her paid companion
this information about her grand-nephew. Mrs. Maldon, when the moment
for utterance came, had discovered that she simply could not do it,
and all her conscientious regard for Rachel and all her sense of duty
were not enough to make her do it. So that Rachel, unsuspectingly, had
been spared a tremendous emotional crisis. By this time she had grown
nearly accustomed to the fact of the disappearance of the money. She
had completely recovered from the hysteria caused by old Batchgrew's
attack, and was, indeed, in the supervening calm, very much ashamed of
it.
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