"How did her mistress take her desertion?"
"Very much to heart, as she had treated the young savage very kindly, and ought to have received more gratitude. Perhaps when she hears how her adopted child wandered about at night, and ended by killing Clear, she will be glad she is dead and buried. Yet, I don't know. Women are wonderfully soft-hearted, and certainly Rhoda is thought no end of by that fat woman."
"Well! well!" said Lucian, impatient of this digression. "So Rhoda went back to her tribe?"
"Yes, sir; and as she was sharp, clever, and, moreover, came with some money which she had stolen from Mrs. Bensusan—for she added theft to ingratitude—she was received with open arms. With her gypsy cousins she went about in the true gypsy style, but, not being hardened to the outdoor life in wet weather, she fell ill."
"Civilisation made her delicate, I suppose," said Denzil grimly.
"Exactly; she was not fit for the tent life after having lived for so long under a comfortable roof. She fell ill with inflammation of the lungs, and in a wonderfully short space of time she died."
"When did she confess her crime?"
"I'm coming to that, sir. When she was dying she sent two gypsies to the nearest magistrate—who happened to be the vicar of the parish in which the tribe were then encamped—and asked him to see her on a matter of life and death. The vicar came at once, and when he became aware that Rhoda was the girl wanted in the Vrain case—for he had read all about her in the papers—he became very interested. He took down the confession of the wretched girl, had it signed by two witnesses and Rhoda herself, and sent it up to Scotland Yard."
"And this confession——"