"Is there?" said Lavender sharply. "Have they found out who did it?"
"Oh, no," said Lucille; "there doesn't seem to be any clue at all."
Lavender drew a deep sigh of relief; she could not be sufficiently grateful for the extraordinary presence of mind which Melville had displayed throughout that awful journey from Fairbridge. If he had not seen the handkerchief which she dropped by the ha-ha they might both be under arrest already. But other thoughts were passing through Lucille's mind.
"There's nothing about the murderer," she said, "but there is an advertisement saying that if Lady Holt will apply to some solicitors she will hear of something to her advantage. Did I pull your hair?"
For Lavender started perceptibly.
"Where is the advertisement? I should like to see it."
"I thought it would interest you," Lucille replied, "for the first time Mr. Ashley called here you told me he might ask for Lady Holt, and that if he did I was to come and let you know. Is Lady Holt a friend of yours?"
"Let me see the advertisement," said Lavender again, and Lucille went to fetch the morning paper. While she was gone, Lavender considered as rapidly as possible what she had better do. For ten years Lucille had been with her, a companion rather than a servant, the trusted and trustworthy recipient of all her confidences; and Lavender, on her part, had played the friend rather than the mistress to this otherwise friendless woman, had made her life bright and happy, and reaped the reward of being served with fidelity and devotion. Never once had Lucille presumed upon her relations with her employer, and in believing that she placed her mistress's interests above her own Lavender judged rightly. Lucille returned and gave the newspaper to Lavender, who read the paragraph with trembling eagerness; she must give some explanation to Lucille, and the true explanation was also the politic one to give. She turned round and looked the other woman in the eyes.
"It is for me, Lucille," she said in a low voice. "I was once Sir Geoffrey Holt's wife."
Lucille gasped.