"Stop, sir!"

I had evidently given offense; I stopped directly.

"No person on the face of the earth," she declared, loftily, "has
ever had the right to call herself my mistress. Of my own free
will, sir, I took charge of the child."

"Because you are fond of her?" I suggested.

"I hate her."

It was unwise on my part--I protested. "Hate a baby little more
than a year old!" I said.

"_Her_ baby!"

She said it with the air of a woman who had produced an
unanswerable reason. "I am accountable to nobody," she went on.
"If I consented to trouble myself with the child, it was in
remembrance of my friendship--notice, if you please, that I say
friendship--with the unhappy father."

Putting together what I had just heard, and what I had seen in
the cell, I drew the right conclusion at last. The woman, whose
position in life had been thus far an impenetrable mystery to me,
now stood revealed as one, among other objects of the Prisoner's
jealousy, during her disastrous married life. A serious doubt
occurred to me as to the authority under which the husband's
mistress might be acting, after the husband's death. I instantly