“I want to speak to you about Betsy. She says she must leave us; that her lover’s death has so affected her spirits she can’t give her heart to her work.”
“Very well. I suppose other cooks are to be met with.”
“That’s so like a man. It’s not merely the cooking, it is that she knows all the ways of the house. Besides, she tells me something about your friend Miss Hale.”
“Miss Hale is no friend of mine. Mr. Hale is my friend.”
“I am glad to hear you say so, for if she had been your friend, what Betsy says would have annoyed you.”
“Let me hear it,” said he, with the extreme quietness of manner he had been assuming for the last few days.
“Betsy says, that the night on which her lover—I forget his name—for she always calls him ‘he’——”
“Leonards.”
“The night on which Leonards was last seen at the station—when he was last seen on duty, in fact—Miss Hale was there, walking about with a young man who, Bessy believes, killed Leonards by some blow or push.”
“Leonards was not killed by any blow or push.”