In the meantime, Sergeant Cuff and I proceeded to my lady’s room.

At the last conference we had held with her, we had found her not over willing to lift her eyes from the book which she had on the table.  On this occasion there was a change for the better.  She met the Sergeant’s eye with an eye that was as steady as his own.  The family spirit showed itself in every line of her face; and I knew that Sergeant Cuff would meet his match, when a woman like my mistress was strung up to hear the worst he could say to her.

CHAPTER XXI

The first words, when we had taken our seats, were spoken by my lady.

“Sergeant Cuff,” she said, “there was perhaps some excuse for the inconsiderate manner in which I spoke to you half an hour since.  I have no wish, however, to claim that excuse.  I say, with perfect sincerity, that I regret it, if I wronged you.”

The grace of voice and manner with which she made him that atonement had its due effect on the Sergeant.  He requested permission to justify himself—­putting his justification as an act of respect to my mistress.  It was impossible, he said, that he could be in any way responsible for the calamity, which had shocked us all, for this sufficient reason, that his success in bringing his inquiry to its proper end depended on his neither saying nor doing anything that could alarm Rosanna Spearman.  He appealed to me to testify whether he had, or had not, carried that object out.  I could, and did, bear witness that he had.  And there, as I thought, the matter might have been judiciously left to come to an end.

Sergeant Cuff, however, took it a step further, evidently (as you shall now judge) with the purpose of forcing the most painful of all possible explanations to take place between her ladyship and himself.

“I have heard a motive assigned for the young woman’s suicide,” said the Sergeant, “which may possibly be the right one.  It is a motive quite unconnected with the case which I am conducting here.  I am bound to add, however, that my own opinion points the other way.  Some unbearable anxiety in connexion with the missing Diamond, has, I believe, driven the poor creature to her own destruction.  I don’t pretend to know what that unbearable anxiety may have been.  But I think (with your ladyship’s permission) I can lay my hand on a person who is capable of deciding whether I am right or wrong.”

“Is the person now in the house?” my mistress asked, after waiting a little.

“The person has left the house,” my lady.

That answer pointed as straight to Miss Rachel as straight could be.  A silence dropped on us which I thought would never come to an end.  Lord! how the wind howled, and how the rain drove at the window, as I sat there waiting for one or other of them to speak again!

“Be so good as to express yourself plainly,” said my lady.  “Do you refer to my daughter?”