She had flung herself on Rhoda, who, desperate, used her last weapon.
“If you go,” she said firmly, “I’ll tell Sir Robert what I know about the scarred hand, and Mr. Rotherfield shall be had up for Langton’s murder.”
“You wretch!”
But though Lady Sarah uttered the word with all the fierceness of which she was capable, she dared not, in the face of this threat, go any further with her wicked plan.
“All right. I give way,” she said in a tone of rage and despair.
Rhoda trembling and sick at heart, saw Sir Robert’s wife tear off her coat and veil, and hurry back into the house.
Rhoda had gained a victory, but what was the price to be paid? That there would be a reckoning to meet she felt sure, and it was with a heavy sense of foreboding, and with none of the spirits of a conqueror that she in her turn went, slowly and timidly, back to the house.
CHAPTER XVII.
SIR ROBERT’S PLANS
Rhoda took care to let Lady Sarah have plenty of time to get inside the house, and to go upstairs, before she followed.
She desired nothing less than another tête-à-tête with the enraged and disappointed woman whom she had just saved from disgrace and guilt. For Lady Sarah was not grateful: the last glance she had thrown at the girl who saved her was full of a bitterness which prepared Rhoda for what she had to expect from her.