I had just time to think of Rosanna Spearman’s sudden illness at yesterday’s dinner—­but not time to make any answer—­when I saw Sergeant Cuff’s eyes suddenly turn aside towards the shrubbery; and I heard him say softly to himself, “Hullo!”

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“A touch of the rheumatics in my back,” said the Sergeant, in a loud voice, as if he wanted some third person to hear us.  “We shall have a change in the weather before long.”

A few steps further brought us to the corner of the house.  Turning off sharp to the right, we entered on the terrace, and went down, by the steps in the middle, into the garden below.  Sergeant Cuff stopped there, in the open space, where we could see round us on every side.

“About that young person, Rosanna Spearman?” he said.  “It isn’t very likely, with her personal appearance, that she has got a lover.  But, for the girl’s own sake, I must ask you at once whether she has provided herself with a sweetheart, poor wretch, like the rest of them?”

What on earth did he mean, under present circumstances, by putting such a question to me as that?  I stared at him, instead of answering him.

“I saw Rosanna Spearman hiding in the shrubbery as we went by,” said the Sergeant.

“When you said ’Hullo’?”

“Yes—­when I said ‘Hullo!’ If there’s a sweetheart in the case, the hiding doesn’t much matter.  If there isn’t—­as things are in this house—­the hiding is a highly suspicious circumstance, and it will be my painful duty to act on it accordingly.”

What, in God’s name, was I to say to him?  I knew the shrubbery was Mr. Franklin’s favourite walk; I knew he would most likely turn that way when he came back from the station; I knew that Penelope had over and over again caught her fellow-servant hanging about there, and had always declared to me that Rosanna’s object was to attract Mr. Franklin’s attention.  If my daughter was right, she might well have been lying in wait for Mr. Franklin’s return when the Sergeant noticed her.  I was put between the two difficulties of mentioning Penelope’s fanciful notion as if it was mine, or of leaving an unfortunate creature to suffer the consequences, the very serious consequences, of exciting the suspicion of Sergeant Cuff.  Out of pure pity for the girl—­on my soul and my character, out of pure pity for the girl—­I gave the Sergeant the necessary explanations, and told him that Rosanna had been mad enough to set her heart on Mr. Franklin Blake.

Sergeant Cuff never laughed.  On the few occasions when anything amused him, he curled up a little at the corners of the lips, nothing more.  He curled up now.