As I moved slowly away into the night the question thus raised in my own
mind assumed greater and more vital consequence. Was she a true woman or
what my fears pictured her--the scheming, unprincipled abductor of
Gwendolen Ocumpaugh? She looked true, sometimes acted so; but I had
heard and seen what would rouse any man's suspicions, and though I was
not in a position to say: "Mrs. Carew, this was not your first visit to
that scene of old tragedy. You have been there before, and with
Gwendolen in your arms," I was morally certain that this was so; that
Mrs. Ocumpaugh's most trusted friend was responsible for the
disappearance of her child, and I was not quite sure that the child was
not now under her very roof.
It was very late by this time, but I meant, if possible, to settle some
of these doubts before I left the neighborhood of the cottage.
How? By getting a glimpse of Mrs. Carew with her mask off; in the
company of the child, if I could compass it; if not, then entirely alone
with her own thoughts, plans and subtleties.
It was an act more in line with my partner's talents than my own, but I
could not afford to let this deter me. I had had my chance with her,
face to face. For hours I had been in her company. I had seen her in
various stages of emotion, sometimes real and sometimes assumed, but at
no moment had I been sure of her, possibly because at no moment had she
been sure of me. In our first visit to the bungalow; in her own little
library, during the reading of that engrossing tale by which she had so
evidently attempted to lull my suspicions awakened by her one
irrepressible show of alarm on the scene of Gwendolen's disappearance,
and afterward when she saw that they might be so lulled but not
dispelled; in the cellar; and, above all, in that walled-off room where
we had come across the signs of Gwendolen's presence, which even she
could not disavow, she had felt my eyes upon her and made me conscious
that she had so felt them. Now she must believe them removed, and if I
could but gain the glimpse I speak of I should see this woman as she
was.