“Well then, d’ye know,” said Mrs. Lambert hesitatingly, “I think I heard his keys jingling in the pocket of the coat he took off before he went out, and I didn’t notice him taking them out of it—but, oh, my dear, I wouldn’t dare to open any of his things. I might as well quit the house if he found it out.”
“I tell you it’s your privilege as a wife, and your plain duty besides, to see those letters,” urged Charlotte. “I’d recommend you to go up and get those keys now, this minute; it’s like the hand of Providence that he should leave them behind him.”
The force of her will had its effect. Mrs. Lambert got up, and, after another declaration that Roderick would kill her, went out of the room and up the stairs at a pace that Charlotte did not think her capable of. She heard her step hurrying into the room overhead, and in a surprisingly short time she was back again, uttering pants of exhaustion and alarm, but holding the keys in her hand.
“Oh,” she said, “I thought every minute I heard him coming to the door! Here they are for you, Charlotte, take them! I’ll not have anything more to say to them.”
She flung the keys into Miss Mullen’s lap, and prepared to sink into her chair again. Charlotte jumped up, and the keys rattled on to the floor.
“And d’ye think I’d lay a finger on them?” she said, in such a voice that Mrs. Lambert checked herself in the action of sitting down, and Muffy fled under his mistress’s chair and barked in angry alarm. “Pick them up yourself! It’s no affair of mine!” She pointed with a fateful finger at the keys, and Mrs. Lambert obediently stooped for them. “Now, there’s the desk, ye’d better not lose any more time, but get it down.”
The shelf on which the desk stood was the highest one of a small book-case, and was just above the level of Mrs. Lambert’s head, so that when, after many a frightened look out of the window, she stretched up her short arms to take it down, she found the task almost beyond her.
“Come and help me, Charlotte,” she cried; “I’m afraid it’ll fall on me!”
“I’ll not put a hand to it,” said Charlotte, without moving, while her ugly, mobile face twitched with excitement; “it’s you have the right and no one else, and I’d recommend ye to hurry!”
The word hurry acted electrically on Mrs. Lambert; she put forth all her feeble strength, and lifting the heavy despatch-box from the shelf, she staggered with it to the dinner-table.