“Well, you have at last made up your mind, have you, Nicholls? I suppose you know that we have applied for a warrant for your arrest?”
The woman gave a shriek which unmistakably was one of fear.
“My arrest?” she gasped. “What for?”
“The murder of your sister Susan.”
“ ’Twasn’t me!” she said quickly.
“Then Susan is dead?” retorted Lady Molly, quietly.
Mary saw that she had betrayed herself. She gave Lady Molly a look of agonised horror, then turned as white as a sheet and would have fallen had not the Reverend Octavius Ludlow gently led her to a chair.
“It wasn’t me,” she repeated, with a heart-broken sob.
“That will be for you to prove,” said Lady Molly dryly. “The child cannot now, of course, remain with Mrs. Williams; she will be removed to the workhouse, and——”
“No, that she shan’t be,” said the mother excitedly. “She shan’t be, I tell you. The workhouse, indeed,” she added in a paroxysm of hysterical tears, “and her father a lord!”