“So we thought at first, sir. But when the scandal broke out, nobody believed they were strangers. I remember how it happened as well as if it was yesterday. Catherick came into our garden one night, and woke us by throwing up a handful of gravel from the walk at our window. I heard him beg my husband, for the Lord’s sake, to come down and speak to him. They were a long time together talking in the porch. When my husband came back upstairs he was all of a tremble. He sat down on the side of the bed and he says to me, ‘Lizzie! I always told you that woman was a bad one⁠—I always said she would end ill, and I’m afraid in my own mind that the end has come already. Catherick has found a lot of lace handkerchiefs, and two fine rings, and a new gold watch and chain, hid away in his wife’s drawer⁠—things that nobody but a born lady ought ever to have⁠—and his wife won’t say how she came by them.’ ‘Does he think she stole them?’ says I. ‘No,’ says he, ‘stealing would be bad enough. But it’s worse than that, she’s had no chance of stealing such things as those, and she’s not a woman to take them if she had.