Chapter XXXIV

After the door had shut behind Alfred Head,
Anna Bauer sat on, quite motionless, awhile.
What mind was left to her, after the terrifying and
agonising interview she had just had, was absorbed in
the statement made to her concerning Jervis Blake.

She remembered, with blinding clearness, the afternoon
that Rose had come into her kitchen to say in a
quiet, toneless voice, "They think, Anna, that they will
have to take off his foot." She saw, as clearly as if
her nursling were there in this whitewashed little cell,
the look of desolate, dry-eyed anguish which had filled
Rose's face.

But that false quietude had only lasted a few moments,
for, in response to her poor old Anna's exclamation
of horror and of sympathy, Rose Otway had flung
herself into her nurse's arms, and had lain there shivering
and crying till the sound of the front door opening
to admit her mother had forced her to control herself.

Anna's mind travelled wearily on, guided by reproachful
memory through a maze of painful recollections.
Once more she stood watching the strange marriage
ceremony -- trying hard, aye, and succeeding, to
obey Sir Jacques's strict injunction. More than one
of those present had glanced over at her, Anna, very
kindly during that trying half-hour. How would they
then have looked at her if they had known what she
knew now?

She lived again as in long drawn-out throbs of pain

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v?