’Don’t, don’t, Emmy.  Here’s Dr. Billings come to see Miss Derrick.  She’s the only one that has been hurt.  Go down, there’s a good girl, and send somebody to help in Miss Derrick’s room; you can’t be any use yourself just now.’

‘But how did it happen?  Oh, how did it happen?’

’I’ll come and tell you all about it.  Better put the boy to bed again, hadn’t you?’

When she had recovered her senses Emmeline took this advice, and, leaving the nurse by the child’s cot, went down to survey the ruin of her property.  It was a sorry sight.  Where she had left a reception-room such as any suburban lady in moderate circumstances might be proud of; she now beheld a mere mass of unrecognisable furniture, heaped on what had once been a carpet, amid dripping walls and under a grimed ceiling.

‘Oh!  Oh!’ She all but sank before the horror of the spectacle.  Then, in a voice of fierce conviction, ’She did it! She did it!  It was because I told her to leave.  I know she did it on purpose!’

Mumford closed the door of the room, shutting out Cobb and the cook and the housemaid.  He repeated the story Cobb had told him, and quietly urged the improbability of his wife’s explanation.  Miss Derrick, he pointed out, was lying prostrate from severe burns; the fire must have been accidental, but the accident, to be sure, was extraordinary enough.  Thereupon Mrs. Mumford’s wrath turned against Cobb.  What business had such a man—­a low-class savage—­in her drawing-room?  He must have come knowing that she and her husband were away for the evening.

‘You can question him, if you like,’ said Mumford.  ‘He’s out there.’

Emmeline opened the door, and at once heard a cry of pain from upstairs.  Mumford, also hearing it, and seeing Cobb’s misery-stricken face by the light of the hall lamp, whispered to his wife: 

‘Hadn’t you better go up, dear?  Dr. Billings may think it strange.’

It was much wiser to urge this consideration than to make a direct plea for mercy.  Emmeline did not care to have it reported that selfish distress made her indifferent to the sufferings of a friend staying in her house.  But she could not pass Cobb without addressing him severely.

‘So you are the cause of this!’

’I am, Mrs. Mumford, and I can only say that I’ll do my best to make good the damage to your house.’

’Make good I fancy you have strange ideas of the value of the property destroyed.’

Insolence was no characteristic of Mrs. Mumford.  But calamity had put her beside herself; she spoke, not in her own person, but as a woman whose carpets, curtains and bric-a-brac have ignominiously perished.

‘I’ll make it good,’ Cobb repeated humbly, ’however long it takes me.  And don’t be angry with that poor girl, Mrs. Mumford.  It wasn’t her fault, not in any way.  She didn’t know I was coming; she hadn’t asked me to come.  I’m entirely to blame.’