If Mrs.Gallilee doesn't mind the public exposure, you may find yourself in a prison.' She snapped her fingers in my face.
'Suppose I find myself with the hangman's rope round my neck,' she said, 'what do I care, so long as Carmina is safe from her aunt ?' After that pretty answer, she sat down by her girl's bedside, and burst out crying." Mr.Gallilee listened absently: his mind still dwelt on Carmina.
"I meant well," he said, "when I asked you to take her out of this house.

It's no wonder if _I_ was wrong.

What I am too stupid to understand is--why _you_ allowed her to be moved." Benjulia listened with a grim smile; Mr.Gallilee's presumption amused him.
"I wonder whether there was any room left for memory, when nature furnished your narrow little head," he answered pleasantly.

"Didn't I say that moving her was the least of two risks?
And haven't I just warned you of what might have happened, if we had left your wife and her niece together in the same house?
When I do a thing at my time of life, Mr.Gallilee--don't think me conceited--I know why I do it." While he was speaking of himself in these terms, he might have said something more.

He might have added, that his dread of the loss of Carmina's reason really meant his dread of a commonplace termination to an exceptionally interesting case.