Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/30

 duty for "help" to eat at the same table with their employers. Every departure from this primitive rule was occasion for heart-burnings and recriminations.

"They ate by themselves in the kitchen."

There was a slight raising of the head, a shadow, as it were, of the old self-assertive pride, which in other days would have made itself manifest in answering this question. So deep was Millbank in the tragedy that the audience almost lost the weight of the heinous fact confessed in this answer.

"Did you go directly to your sitting room after supper?"

"No, we went out into the front yard, to look at the flower-beds, and then crossed the road to the orchard and walked through that to the river-bank."

"From there you returned to the house?"

"Yes."

"Where did you go on your return?"

"To my sitting room. He lighted my lamp and then excused himself, because of some work he had to do."