Burden tried to control her shaking voice.
"If—if it is the same young lady who was at Lady Wolfer's——I was her maid, you remember——"
"I remember, you fool! Quick!"
"Then—then I know something. She's very pretty—and young, with dark hair——"
Lady Luce sprang to her feet.
"You idiot! You drive me mad. I've not seen her. But if it be the same——Well—well?"
"Then—then Lord Angleford is to be pitied. He has been deceived—deceived cruelly," said Burden, in gasps.
Lady Luce caught her by the shoulders and glared into her quailing eyes.
"Listen to me, Burden: pull yourself together. Tell me what you know—tell me this instant! Well? Sit there in that chair. Now!" She pressed the shoulders she still held with the gesture of an Arab slave driver. "Now, quick! Who is she? What do you know against her?"
In faltering accents, and yet with a kind of savage pleasure, Burden spoke for some minutes; and as Lady Luce listened, the pallor of her face gave place to a flush of fierce, malicious joy.