After she had informed the doll that she was not her mother, at the close of the interview she added pathetically, "that if she was dood, very dood, she might be her mamma, and love her very much." I have already hinted that Mrs.Tretherick was deficient in a sense of humor.

Perhaps it was for this reason that this whole scene affected her most unpleasantly; and the conclusion sent the blood tingling to her cheek.

There was something, too, inconceivably lonely in the situation.
The unfurnished vacant room, the half-lights, the monstrous doll, whose very size seemed to give a pathetic significance to its speechlessness, the smallness of the one animate, self-centered figure--all these touched more or less deeply the half-poetic sensibilities of the woman.
She could not help utilizing the impression as she stood there, and thought what a fine poem might be constructed from this material if the room were a little darker, the child lonelier--say, sitting beside a dead mother's bier, and the wind wailing in the turrets.

And then she suddenly heard footsteps at the door below, and recognized the tread of the colonel's cane.
She flew swiftly down the stairs, and encountered the colonel in the hall.

Here she poured into his astonished ear a voluble and exaggerated statement of her discovery, and indignant recital of her wrongs.