He would say that, I knew it. But Mrs Sucksby wouldn''t believe him. She would see through him like he was glass. She would hunt me out. She had not kept me seventeen years to lose me now, like this! She would look in every house in England, until she found me!
That''s what I thought, as I grew calmer. I thought I must only speak with the doctors and they would see their mistake and let me go; but that anyway, Mrs Sucksby would come, and I should get out like that.
And when I was free, I would go to wherever Maud Lilly was, and—wasn''t I my mother''s own daughter, after all?—I would kill her.
You can see what little idea I had of the awfulness of the fix I was really in.
Next morning, the woman who had thrown me about came back for me. She came, not with the two men, Mr Bates and Mr Hedges, but with another woman—nurses, they called them there; but they were no more nurses than I was, they only got that work through being stout and having great big hands like mangles. They came into the room and stood and looked me over. Nurse Spiller said,
''Here she is.''
The other, who was dark, said,
''Young, to be mad.''
''Listen here,'' I said, very carefully. I had worked this out. I had heard them coming, and had got to my feet and put my petticoat straight, and tidied my hair. ''Listen here. You think I am mad. I am not. I am not the lady you and the doctors suppose me to be, at all. That lady, and her husband—Richard Rivers—are a pair of swindlers; and they have swindled you, and me, and just about everybody; and it is very important that the doctors know it, so I may be let out and those swindlers caught. I—''