"I don't think I have forgiven her--yet----" she said very quietly. "At the same time I don't care to doubt the genuineness of her affection for me. I would rather think that she turned coward at the notion of suffering punishment, and let me endure it in her place through a selfish terror which forbade her to own up and take the blame herself."
"Well--if you look at it like that----" Major Carstairs was evidently not satisfied; and Chloe, possibly feeling unable, or reluctant, to make any further excuse for Tochatti, hurried on with her tale.
"Another factor in Tochatti's determination not to suffer herself is to be found in her dread of a prison as a sort of asylum like that in which she had been confined abroad. I don't know what kind of institution that had been, but she evidently retains to this day a very vivid recollection of the horrors she then endured; and her heart failed her at the bare thought of returning to such a frightful existence as she had then experienced. At any rate"--she suddenly abandoned her apologia--"she could not face it; and so she allowed me to take the blame; and by reiterating the fact that she could not write--a theory which the other servants held, in common with me----"
"But had you never seen her write? It seems odd, all the years she had been in your service!"
"No, I had never seen her write, for the simple reason that she never did write. It seems that the result of that fatal letter of hers had imprinted a horror of writing on her mind; and I really believe that until the day on which she penned the first anonymous letter she had never taken a pen or pencil in her hand...."
"Well, it's admitted she wrote those letters, and hoodwinked the world," said Carstairs briskly. "And though I confess I don't understand how she could reconcile her actions with her affection for you we will let that point pass. But now--what about those last letters? Is Dr. Anstice's supposition that she was jealous of him correct?"
"Quite." Chloe looked at Anstice rather apologetically. "You know Tochatti is of a horribly jealous disposition; and she could not bear to see Cherry growing fonder of you day by day. That unlucky accident was the crowning point, of course; and the fact that you appeared to slight her powers of looking after the child--you must forgive me for putting it like that--was too much for her. With the arrival of Nurse Trevor Tochatti seemed to lose all sense of decent behaviour; and her idea was to repeat her former experience and circularize the neighbourhood with a scandalous story which she hoped, as she has since owned to me, might succeed in driving you away."