wept o'er my body."

Of so melancholy a character was the picture thus presented to her
mind, augmenting her previous agitation, that the tumult within her
welled damply through her eyes, with noisy distress through her lips.

Patting her distressed back, imploring her to calm, Mr. Chater begged
some account of the catastrophe from which she had escaped.

Between convulsive sobs she told him, he bridging the hiatuses of
emotion with "Oh-dear-oh-dears," in which alarm and sympathy were
nicely mingled.

Painting details with a masterly hand, "And there was I alone," she
concluded--"alone, at the mercy of a wild horse and a drunken cabman."

"But Miss Humfray was with you?"

"Miss Humfray managed to jump out and leave me."

Through all this scene--in one form or another a matter of daily
occurrence, and therefore not to arouse interest--Mary had stood
waiting its cessation and her orders. Mr. Chater turned upon her.
Naturally disposed to be kind to the girl, he yet readily saw in his
wife's statement a way of escape from the castigation he had been
enduring. As the small boy who has been kicked by the bully will with
delighted relief rush to the bully's aid when the kicks are at length
turned to another, urging him on so that he may forget his first prey,
so Mr. Chater, delighted at his fortune, eagerly joined in turning his
wife's wrath to Mary's head. For self-preservation, at whatever cost