Lady Splay paused for Jenny’s comment, but none was uttered then.  Jenny was listening with a concentration of all her thoughts.  Here was a new fact of which she was ignorant, creeping into the affair.  Whither did it lead?  Did it strike her weapon from her hand?  Upset her fine plan of avenging her dear mistress’s most unhappy life?  She would not believe it.

“He rang up Rackham Park—­mark the time, Jenny—­at a few minutes after twelve,” said Lady Splay impressively, and Jenny’s uneasiness was markedly increased.

“Fancy that!” she returned flippantly.  “But I don’t see, my lady, what that has to do with me.”

“You will see, Jenny,” Lady Splay continued with gentleness.  “He got an answer.”

Jenny turned that announcement over in her mind.

“An answer, did he?”

“Yes, Jenny, and an answer in a woman’s voice.”

A startled cry broke from the lips of Jenny Prask.  Her cheeks blanched and horror stared suddenly from her eyes.  She understood whose voice it must have been which answered the question from London.  Before her, too, the pitiful vision of the lonely woman waiting for the shrill summons of the telephone bell to close the door of life upon her, rose clear; and such a flood of grief and compassion welled up in her as choked her utterance.

“Oh!” she whispered, moaning.

“Whose voice was it, Jenny?”

At the question Jenny rallied.  All the more dearly because of that vision, should Joan Whitworth pay, the shining armour of her young beauty be pierced, her pride be humbled, her indifference turned to shame.

“I can’t think, my lady—­unless it was Miss Whitworth’s.”

“I asked you to mark the time, Jenny.  A few minutes after midnight.  Miss Whitworth was at that moment in the supper-room at Harrel.  She was seen there.  The woman’s voice which answered was either Mrs. Croyle’s or yours.”

Nothing could have been quieter or gentler than Millie Splay’s utterance.  But it was like a searing iron to the shoulders of Jenny Prask.

“Mine!” The word was launched in a cry of incredulous anger.  “It wasn’t mine.  Oh, as if I would do such a thing!  The idea!  Well, I never did!”

“I don’t believe it was yours, Jenny,” said Millie Splay.

“Granted, I’m sure,” returned Jenny Prask, tossing her head.

“But how many people will agree with me?” Millie Splay went on.

“I don’t care, my lady.”

“Don’t you?  You will, Jenny,” said Millie in a hard and biting tone which contrasted violently with the smoothness of her earlier questions.  “You are trying, very maliciously, to do a great injury to a young girl who had never a thought of hurting your mistress, and you have only succeeded in placing yourself in real danger.”

Jenny tried to laugh contemptuously.

“Me in danger!  Goodness me, what next, I wonder?”

“Just listen how your story works out, Jenny,” and Millie Splay set it out succinctly step by step.