‘No?  You are sure of it?  You feel it impossible, Mr. Rolfe?’

’Quite impossible.  There are men —­ oh, you may assure yourself that it was pure accident.  Unfortunately, it happens so often.’

She hung on his words, leaning towards him, her eyes wide and lips parted.

’So often!  I have seen so many cases, in the papers.  And he was absent-minded.  But what right have I to seek comfort for myself?  Was I any less the cause of his death?  But must I tell all this in public?  Do you think I ought to?’

With comfortable sincerity Rolfe was able to maintain the needlessness of divulging anything beyond the state of Abbott’s health and his pecuniary troubles.

‘It isn’t as if we had lived on ill terms with each other,’ said the widow, with a sigh of gratitude.  ’Anything but that.  Until of late we never knew a difference, and the change that came was wholly my fault.  I hadn’t the honesty to speak out and say what was in my mind.  I never openly opposed his wish to leave London.  I pretended to agree to everything, pretended.  He showed me all his reasons, put everything simply and plainly and kindly before me, and if I had said what I thought, I feel sure he would have given it up at once.  It was in my own hands to decide one way or the other.’

’Why should you reproach yourself so with mere thoughts, of which he never became aware?’

’Oh, it was yesterday, when he came back from the City.  He knew then that I was glad he couldn’t carry out his purpose.  He looked at me as he never had done before —­ a look of surprise and estrangement.  I shall always see that look on his face.’

Harvey talked in the strain of solace, feeling how extraordinary was his position, and that of all men he had least fitness for such an office.  It relieved him when, without undue abruptness, he could pass to the practical urgencies of the case.  Were Wager’s children still in the house?  Alas! they were, and Mrs. Abbott knew not what to do about them.

’You can’t think of anyone who would take them —­ for a day or two, even?’

Among her acquaintances there was not one of whom she could venture to ask such a service.  ‘People have such a dread of children.’  Her sister was a governess in Ireland; other near relatives she had none.  Edgar Abbott’s mother, old and in feeble health, lived near Waterbury; how was the dreadful news to be conveyed to her?

Harvey bestirred himself.  Here, at all events, was a call to active usefulness; he felt the privilege of money and leisure.

’Can you give me the name of any one at Waterbury who would be a fit person to break the news to Mrs. Abbott?’

Two names were mentioned, and he noted them.

‘I will send telegrams at once to both.’

‘You will say it was an accident ——­’

’That shall be made clear.  As for the children, I think I can have them taken away this morning.  In the house where I live there is a decent woman who I dare say would be willing to look after them for the present.  Will you leave this entirely in my hands?’