"Ryder, who is he?"
"Ryder is my lady's-maid: her bedroom is on that side the house."
"Can we see Mrs. Ryder?"
"Certainly," said Mrs. Gaunt, and rose and rang the bell.
Mrs. Ryder answered the bell, in person, very promptly; for she was listening at the door.
Being questioned, she told the magistrates what she had heard down by the mere and said she was sure it was her master's voice that cried "Help!" and "Murder!" And with this she began to cry.
Mrs. Gaunt trembled and turned pale.
The magistrates confined their questions to Ryder.
They elicited, however, very little more from her. She saw the drift of their questions, and had an impulse to defend her mistress there present. Behind her back it would have been other-wise.
That resolution once taken, two children might as well have tried to extract evidence from her as two justices of the peace.