‘Now, where did you put that nasty poison?’ she asked, as they entered the bedroom together.
‘Where you told me, mother; on the top of the wardrobe,’ answered Nell.
‘Have you written a label for it yet?’
‘No; I forgot to do so.’
‘Well, don’t you put it off another day,’ replied Mrs Llewellyn; ‘for father was quite vexed with me for letting the bottle go out of my hands. He says a wineglassful of that stuff would kill the strongest man in Monmouth.’
‘No one can get at it there,’ said Nell, quietly.
‘That’s all right then, but I shouldn’t like for there to be an accident with it. Here, Nell, tie this blue silk handkerchief round your throat. You always look so nice in blue, I think.’
Nell assented passively to all her mother’s propositions, and, putting a straw hat on her head, walked slowly up the meadow and through the pine plantation, to the private apartments of the housekeeper at the Hall.
‘Well, Nell,’ said Mrs Hody when she arrived there, ‘and so you’ve come to have a private audience of his lordship. He came to tell me he would see you here at eleven o’clock, but as it was a private matter, he did not wish to have it discussed in the dining-room, so I was to send him word quietly when you arrived. And what can you have to say to the earl, I wonder, as all the world can’t hear?’
‘I asked to speak to Lord Ilfracombe on some business connected with my father, Mrs Hody,’ replied Nell, blushing; ‘he was my former master, you know, or father would have come himself, but he thought his lordship would rather see me.’