"Of course that will be all right," said Margaret, with dignity.
"Are you sure, ma'am? because they say here you had no money, that your sister is living in a very poor way, and that you married master for his money."
"You are quite forgetting yourself," she said, and then the sting of these words made her turn away. Here was a truth--she had acknowledged to herself--put in the coarsest possible way to her! Had she a right to resent it?
She dressed her baby and herself, put up a few necessaries, and then knelt down and asked for help and guidance. It could not be wrong to go, for she was sure that her husband was mad; she must go and she must take her baby, who was hers; she was sure if she stayed that her husband would do her an injury; she had long had a vague fear, but last night had made her tremble; supposing he broke out in this way when the man was not by his side! She was trembling now as she went downstairs.
"Baby must keep quiet," she whispered; but how could baby know? As they passed her husband's door her frightened and close embrace alarmed and hurt the child, and she set up a tremendous roar. Margaret went to the front door; no key was there; she turned to the drawer to look and found her husband beside her.
"Where are you going?" he thundered, holding her shoulder as in a vice.
"I am going out," she answered, trying to speak, quivering with fear all the time.
"You do not go out at that door! and besides how can you go out with your precious child in the rain?"
Poor Margaret looked up and there indeed she saw that it was raining heavily.
Her heart sank and she paused irresolute.
At that moment the key turned in the lock, and the man came in.
"I have been to the doctor and he is coming directly," he said, and with a feeling of being baffled, though only for the time, poor Margaret turned her weary steps upstairs.
She was over-excited, and cried with the passion that comes from weakness, as from despair.
Then she left her child upstairs, and prepared to see the doctor. Through him she would surely be able to arrange something.
No one, she kept saying to herself, would wish her to stay with a madman, no one could leave a child in his keeping.
And she went to the sitting-room, and when she heard the doctor come she fled swiftly towards him, and took him upstairs to her own room. She would lay everything before him, and he would help her.