was innocent, and it was with more than common understanding that she studied the details in the story which might make his innocence clear. “Is it very wicked of me,
Mr. Driver?” she said, “that I do not feel a bit, not a bit grateful to
Mr. Vane-Cartwright, and I do not believe father does. I do believe he would have gone to the workhouse rather, if he had known it when we came here that he was to be under
Mr. Vane-Cartwright. But he thought the gentleman who sent for us, and who was really his agent, was the master of the place; and, once we were here, mother begged him so not to go. Mother is always saying how good
Mr. Cartwright has been to us, and father never answers a word; but I am sure he has a plan to take us away somewhere far off.” “Tell me,” I said, “what makes you say all this. Have you seen anything in
Mr. Vane-Cartwright to make you think he had some wrong reason for getting your father to come here?” “Oh, I do not say that,” she said, “but I have always feared his looks. Always, I think, since he first came to our house to talk to father, and much more since I saw him at the window that dreadful morning when poor
Mr. Peters lay dead.” “Why, what could you see that morning?” I said. “Oh, very little,” she said. “You see, of course we heard the news as Edith passed by on her way to call the police, and mother told me to keep within doors, and she kept in herself, and then she went to father and woke him, and she stayed there talking to him, and I was alone and I felt so frightened. And then the policeman came, and you, sir, and the doctor; and by-and-by some neighbours came looking in. One of them was
Mrs. Trimmer who kept the baker’s shop, and I was fond of her, and I do not know whether it was that I was frightened to be alone, or just inquisitiveness, for I was a child then, though it is not so long ago, but, though I never disobeyed mother before, I did so that time; and I went out, and
Mrs. Trimmer took my hand and we walked up and looked at the house. It was not much we saw, for all we stood so long staring; but the front door opened and we saw that Irish gentleman look out, looking so sad, poor man, and then he took a turn or two up and down in the hall, leaving the door open; and then we could hear voices, and the rest of you came downstairs and into the hall, but I could see
Mr. Vane-Cartwright come to the window of
Mr. Peters’ room, and he stood there looking out of the window with his hand leaning on the sash of the window, leaning forward, seeming to be looking out intently at the people below.” “Did he open the latch of the window?” I asked at once. “I couldn’t say that,” said she. “Why were you so frightened?” I asked. “Oh, I do not know,” said she; “he didn’t look anything very terrible, and I couldn’t see him well for there was frost on the window, but I knew him by his black moustache.”
I suppose every one of my readers has been guilty of mislaying some little article of importance and looking for it everywhere but in the right place, which always turns out to have been the most obvious place of all. Perhaps I may be forgiven for having all these fifteen months been doing something analogous. I had not only overlooked Trethewy’s daughter; I knew when I spoke to Sergeant Speke about those tracks in the snow that there was something more I had meant to ask him and had forgotten; and often since I had been dimly conscious of something forgotten. That something was the window-latch. The girl could not tell me about it, but at least it might be possible to prove by others, who had been in the room, that none but Vane-Cartwright unlatched that window.
I make this obvious reflection now because I made it then, and in making it wasted a moment of possible talk with the girl, a trifling waste which was near to having momentous consequences. Of course it was not because the girl had been standing then on the lawn that Vane-Cartwright had taken the step, when every unnecessary step involved risk, of wiling the Trethewys away in this secret manner. He knew she had something more to tell; she was about to tell it me. “I hardly know,” she broke in on my silence, “whether I ought to think as I do, but I would like to tell you what—” “Well, Ellen!” said, in cheerful tones, a voice that was somehow not cheerful, “taking a walk—who is the happy?—why, it is Mr. Driver. I did not expect the good luck of meeting you again so soon.” Where was I staying, What good chance brought me there, and Really I must move my luggage instantly to his house, and so forth, from the last man in the world whose company I desired at that moment.
I got off staying with him. I got off, I know not on what excuse, true or false, an afternoon’s fishing and a pressingly urged dinner. But then (for an idea struck me) I would, if I had finished the sermon I was writing for a Saint’s day service (not in the calendar, I fear) at a neighbouring church tomorrow, stroll over to Vane-Cartwright’s after my supper if he was in any case going to be in. He would in any case be in, and delighted to see me. He would be in from seven onwards. He dined at 7:30, and if I thought better of it would be delighted to see me
