"My next question is dictated by information received, or let me say by suspicions communicated. It is a vital question; do not answer unless you like. It is, however, a question that will infallibly arise elsewhere. Were you, or were you not, privy to this poor young woman's disappearance?"
"Before God, my lord, I was not!"
"I understand that her parents had no idea where she was until the very end. Had you none either?"
"No more than they had. We were equally in the dark. We believed that she had gone to stay with a friend from the village—a young woman who had married from service, and was settled near London. It was several weeks before we discovered that her friend had never seen her."
"And all this time you did not suspect her condition?"
"Yes; then I did; but not before."
"She made no communication before she went away?"
"None whatever to me—none whatever, to my knowledge."
"And this was early in the year?"
"She left Long Stow in January, and we had no news of her till the middle of June, when strangers communicated with her father."