"Yes, sir; maybe ten minutes after nine."
"Who took the mail?"
"I put it in the box here in the vestibule, as I always do," he said, and suited the action to the word.
I watched him as he walked away. So it had not been a letter which had caused Miss Lawrence's sudden panic. That reduced the possibilities to two. Either she had received a visitor or a telegram. I must endeavour to——
A voice at my elbow aroused me.
"Mrs. Lawrence wishes to see you, sir," it said.
I turned, to find standing beside me the woman who had brought the note to Mrs. Lawrence in the library—the woman whose attitude of malignant triumph had so startled me. I blessed the chance which made it possible for me to question her alone.
"Very well," I said. "Are you Mrs. Lawrence's maid?"
"No, sir; I'm Miss Marcia's maid."
"Ah!" I said, and permitted myself to look at her more closely. She was a woman apparently somewhat over thirty. She had very black hair and eyes, and her face, while not actually repellent, had in it a certain fierceness and hardness far from attractive. A fiery and emotional nature was evident in every line of it—a sinister nature, too, it seemed to me—and I remembered her as I had seen her standing in the library door, exulting in another's misery. I pictured her as the decorator had described her, sitting on the stair, grinning and biting her nails in a kind of infernal triumph. Why should Miss Lawrence have chosen such a woman to attend her? As I looked at her, I saw the folly of attempting to win her confidence—the whip was the only weapon that could touch her—and it must be wielded mercilessly.