"I don't know, my lady. But, you see, my poor mother was always a- watching and a-listening about after his lordship and that strange lady. And I know they noticed it, and maybe they have done made way with mother—My lady! oh! you are fainting! You are dying!" cried Jim, suddenly breaking off, and rushing towards his mistress, who had turned deadly pale, and fallen back in her chair.
"No, no! water, water!" cried Lady Vincent, struggling to overcome her weakness.
Jim flew and brought her a full glass. She quaffed its contents eagerly, and sat up, and tried to collect her panic-stricken faculties. She had received a dreadful shock. Jim's words had given the key to the whole mystery. In one terrible moment the ghastly truth had burst upon her. She understood, now, the whole. She could combine the circumstances: Katie's agitated meeting with her on the stairs; the communication which the poor faithful old creature seemed so eager to make, and which must have related to some discovery that she had made; the mysterious noises heard in Mrs. Dugald's apartments; the guilty paleness of the viscount at the breakfast table; the strange words spoken in Italian by Faustina; the mysterious disappearance of Katie; all, all these pointed to one dreadful deed, from the bare thought of which all Claudia's soul recoiled in horror.
"Jim!" she gasped, in a choking voice.
"My lady!"
"At what hour last evening did you see your mother?"
"Just a little after sunset. The last dinner bell had rung; and I brought some coal up to put on your ladyship's fire, and I set it on the outside of the door, intending to take it in as soon as your ladyship came out to go down to dinner. Well, I was standing there waiting with the coal when I saw my lord's dor open and Mr. Frisbie come out, with such a face! Oh, my lady! I don't know how to describe it; but it had a cruel, cowardly, desperate look—as if he would have cut someone's throat to save himself a shilling! He passed on downstairs without ever seeing me. And the next minute my lord came out of the same room, with—I beg your pardon, my lady—a look of wicked triumph on his face. He was even laughing, like he had done something that pleased him. And he happened to look up and see me, and he growled:
"'What are you doing there, fellow?'
"And I bowed down to the ground a'most, and answered:
"'I have brought up coal for my lady's rooms, my lord.'