And this guilty feeling was added to when she thought, as she frequently did, that she had eaten of their bread under false colours. Mrs. Manning might as well have applied hot irons to Mimi’s flesh unwittingly as to mention Mimi’s “late husband.” Never was there any malice or inquisitiveness in her voice, and that lack of suspicion hurt Mimi a thousand times more than accusations and recriminations.
“If your poor husband had only lived to see the baby!” or “Does the boy take after you or your husband?” she would say gently, and her innocent words would make Mimi feel like a distillation of all the Judas Iscariots, the Benedict Arnolds, the Tartuffes, the Pharisees and all the other deceivers and hypocrites of history. Now that she had regained her strength, her inaction annoyed her, the very food she ate at times almost choked her because after all it was charity and more, charity granted through deceit and lies. Time and time again she determined to blurt out the truth to the Mannings whatever the result might be, but each time she decided to put off her confession until she was earning enough money to provide for the baby at least if the Mannings should turn against her. She justified this in her own mind by assuring herself that had she been alone she would have told them her story long since whatever the consequences might have been. But when she saw “Petit Jean” cooing and kicking in the old-fashioned crib which Mr. Manning had brought down from the attic where it had lain for many years (they had had one child who was born dead), Mimi felt she could not in common sense risk the possibility of the baby’s suffering.
Her qualms of conscience were solved for her in an unexpected manner. Early in November the first sleet and snow of the year came down upon the city. Mr. Manning was returning home after a shopping tour, a heavy basket on his arm. Nearing the house, he slipped and fell.