Lady Sarah was leaning on her hand. She was now deadly white, and her eyes seemed to have become twice their natural size. With laboured breathing she gasped out:
“What are you going to do? I don’t admit anything. I don’t know anything. But just tell me what you have in your mind.”
“I must give the picture back to Sir Robert. And—I must tell him how I got it. There is no help for it, is there?”
Lady Sarah sprang off her chair and walked rapidly up and down the room, her draperies flying about her, her hair disordered, her face haggard with strong emotion. Then, quite unexpectedly, she paused in her walk, and then threw herself on her knees in front of Rhoda.
Clasping her hands together, she placed them on the knees of the other woman, and looked up earnestly into her face.
“Do you know what will happen, if you do that?” she asked abruptly.
Rhoda hesitated.
“You’ve got to know what you’re doing,” went on Lady Sarah. “Mind, I know nothing about this picture affair. I’ve heard nothing but what you’ve told me. But I gather that what you’re carrying in that roll is the picture which was stolen out of the gallery last night.”
“You know it is.”
“I know nothing. But let us say that it is the picture. What are you going to tell Sir Robert?”