“I should say,” said he quietly, “that it wasn’t true.”
Lady Sarah bit her lip, disconcerted.
“I swear to you,” said she earnestly, after a short pause, “that it was she who gave me back the picture and begged me to give it to you and to ask you to say nothing, to ask nothing, but to be content to have recovered it.”
He turned round to face his wife.
“Ask her to come and speak to me,” said he quickly.
“If I do, she will leave the house at once. She told me so,” said she sharply.
Sir Robert rose from his chair, and paced up and down the room.
“There is something more in this,” said he with decision.
“Do you doubt my word?”
“Not for a moment, of course. But what I mean is that what she has told you is not the whole of the truth. She is shielding some one else, the guilty person.”