'I think,' she said, 'I can supply you with a hint which may change your view of the most judicious course for you to pursue. Do you remember that I told you yesterday that I had a friend who knew Mrs. Griswold, and had given me indications by which I recognised her--or, as I thought, recognised Mrs. Foster--at the theatre?'
'Yes, I remember,' said Bryan Duval. 'How stupid I am not to have remembered it sooner! I suppose you can put yourself in communication with her?'
'Easily,' said Miss Montressor. 'She is'--here she hesitated for one last moment--'she is in a very humble station--no higher than that of nurse to Mrs. Griswold's child.'
'Capital,' said Bryan Duval, passing over the explanation with an absolute carelessness highly reassuring to Miss Montressor; 'nothing could be better. She is positively in the house, and knows all about them.'
'Well, she has only been in the house since Mr. Griswold's departure; but I have no doubt she can give us the information we require.'
'Can you get it from her?' said Bryan Duval, in that curt business tone which Miss Montressor had come to know so thoroughly, and which had in it something extremely satisfactory to everybody who wanted to transact business with the man who spoke thus to the purpose.
'I can,' she replied, 'but it will be a little difficult to do without exciting suspicion and precipitating discovery, if indeed the discovery is to be made. I cannot send for her to come to me openly--such an invitation would astonish Mrs. Griswold, and she might meet it with an objection--neither can I go in my proper capacity to Mrs. Griswold's house to visit one of Mrs. Griswold's servants.'
'Why can't you go as a servant yourself?' said Bryan Duval. 'Your make-up in that line is unexceptionable; try it off the boards at once!'
'I will,' said Miss Montressor; 'that is a capital idea. I will go disguised, and discover whether the lady at the play really was Mrs. Griswold. If I cannot see her, which I may manage to do by some contrivance, I shall at least be sure to see a portrait of her. A man like her husband was not likely to be satisfied with a mere miniature of his wife while a full-length portrait was to be had for money. We are, of course, morally certain that the fact is what we take it to be, but the first thing to be done is to achieve actual certainty. Taking it for granted that I see Mrs. Griswold and identify her with the miniature, what will you do next?'
'I cannot decide upon that until I have received your report,' said Bryan Duval, 'on these two heads--first, the identity of Mrs. Griswold with the portrait Mr. Foster showed you; secondly, the name and address of some intimate friend of the family, with whom I may at once communicate.'