“I didn’t know I ’ad done anything so very wrong,” she explained, “but the master seemed quite furious, and said I wasn’t a proper parlour-maid, or I’d have known that visitors must not be shown in straight away like that. I ought to have said that I didn’t know if Mr. Culledon was in; that I would go and see. Oh, he did go on at me!” continued Katherine Harris, volubly. “And I suppose he complained to the mistress, for she give me notice the next day.”
“And you have never seen the foreign lady since?” concluded Lady Molly.
“No; she never come while I was there.”
“By the way, how did you know she was foreign. Did she speak like a foreigner?”
“Oh, no,” replied the girl. “She did not say much—only asked for Mr. Culledon—but she looked French like.”
This unanswerable bit of logic concluded Katherine’s statement. She was very anxious to know whether, if the foreign lady was hanged for murder, she herself would get the £250.
On Lady Molly’s assurance that she certainly would, she departed in apparent content.
3
“Well! we are no nearer than we were before,” said the chief, with an impatient sigh, when the door had closed behind Katherine Harris.
“Don’t you think so?” rejoined Lady Molly, blandly.