“Will you be good enough to tell me where my wife, the Duchess of Hereward, has gone?” demanded the duke, putting a strong curb upon his anger.

“You know where she is well enough. She is in the trap you set for her!” spitefully answered the woman.

In truth, the duke needed all his powers of self-control to enable him to reply calmly: 

“I ask you to tell me where is the Lady of Lone, to whom you went on Tuesday afternoon, with a story which has driven her from her home, and driven her, perhaps, to madness, or to death.  I charge you to tell me, where is she?”

“Ah! where is Miss Salome Levison, the heiress of Lone, you ask!  Exactly!  That is what you would give a great deal to know, wouldn’t you!  You want to follow and join her, and live with her abroad, because you have got a wife living in England.  You’re a noble duke, so you are!  Well, if this is what the nobility are a coming to, the sooner them Republicans have it all their own way the better, I say!” exclaimed Mrs. Brown, throwing herself back in her chair and folding her arms.

Detective Setter here joined the Duke of Hereward, and deferentially drew him away to the other end of the room, and whispered: 

“I beg your grace not to remain here, subjected to the insolence of this mad woman, whose every second word is treason or blasphemy, or worse, if anything can be worse.  Leave me to deal with her.  A very little more, and I shall arrest her on the grave charge of conspiracy.”

“No, Setter, do nothing of the sort.  Use no violence; utter no threats. Now, if ever—­here, if anywhere—­is a crisis, at which we must be not only ‘wise as serpents, but harmless as doves,’ if we would gain any information from this woman,” answered Salome’s husband, as he walked back and rejoined Mrs. Brown.

“Will you tell me, on any terms, where the Lady of Lone is to be found?” he inquired.

“Humph!  I like that!  Aren’t you a sharp?  You can’t call her the duchess, and you won’t call her Miss Levison, so you call her the Lady of Lone, anyway!” exclaimed Mrs. Brown, with a chuckling laugh.

“But, will you, for any price, tell me where she has gone?” repeated the duke.

“As to where Miss Salome Levison has gone, I would not tell you to save your life, even if I could.  I could not tell you, even if I would.  I left her sitting in her bed-chamber at Elmthorpe House, on that Tuesday afternoon after her false marriage.  She was sitting clothed in her deep mourning travelling suit, as she had put on again for her father directly the wedding breakfast was over.  She looked the very image of sorrow and despair.  She did not tell me where she was going.  I don’t believe she even knew herself.  There, that’s all that I have got to tell you, even if you had the power to put me on the rack, as you used to have in the bad old times!” exclaimed Mrs. Brown, once more folding her arms and settling herself in her chair.