The faintest shadow of a change came into her manner. “Yes,” said she, “I told him at breakfast time; but Mr. Blake doesn’t take much interest in his servants; he leaves all such matters to me.”
“Then he does not know you have come for the police?”
“No, sir, and O, if you would be so good as to keep it from him. It is not necessary he should know. I shall let you in the back way. Mr. Blake is a man who never meddles with anything, and—”
“What did Mr. Blake say this morning when you told him that this girl—By the way, what is her name?”
“Emily.”
“That this girl, Emily, had disappeared during the night?”
“Not much of anything, sir. He was sitting at the breakfast table reading his paper, he merely looked up, frowned a little in an absent-minded way, and told me I must manage the servants’ affairs without troubling him.”
“And you let it drop?”
“Yes sir; Mr. Blake is not a man to speak twice to.”
I could easily believe that from what I had seen of him in public, for though by no means a harsh looking man, he had a reserved air which if maintained in private must have made him very difficult of approach.