I should be accusing him of being a criminal.

And yet I might have been in the bottomless pond, in the bottomless pond, and no one would have known." If it all had not seemed so incredible to her, if she could have felt certain herself, she would not have been overwhelmed with this sense of being baffled, bewildered, lost.
The Ayah who so loved Hester might hate her rival.

A jealous native woman might be capable of playing stealthy tricks, which, to her strange mind, might seem to serve a proper end.

Captain Osborn might not know.
She breathed again as this thought came to her.

He could not know; it would be too insane, too dangerous, too wicked.
And yet, if she had been flung headlong down the staircase, if the fall had killed her, where would have been the danger for the man who would only have deplored a fatal accident.