Rhoda bowed her head. She knew that she was going to hear a trumped-up story, but she had to listen. What the real truth was as to Jack Rotherfield’s connection with the tragedy that took place at the Mill-house ten years before she did not yet know, but that it was not what she was going to hear she was quite sure.
“Do you remember—I’m awfully sorry to have to remind you of it, for it’s an unpleasant subject, but I must—Do you remember the night you went away from here all those years ago?”
“Yes,” said Rhoda below her breath.
“And do you know that, on that very night, the poor butler, Langton, was found lying dead in the drawing-room?”
Rhoda bowed her head.
“Well, the next day the place was in a dreadful state, everybody excited and half-crazy. We were all following out the track of the burglar who had got in and murdered the poor man. And standing by the drawing-room window, with Sir Robert and me, Jack, opening it quickly, thrust his hand through the glass, and cut it right open. I fainted. Coming so soon after the ghastly discovery we had made, it made me quite ill. Sir Robert carried me to the sofa, and the doctor, who was in the house with the police, bound up Jack’s hand first, and then came up and attended to me, and then mama took me home!”
Rhoda bowed her head in silence. Lady Sarah waited for some sort of an apology for her behaviour, but she made none. After rather a long pause, during which Rhoda suddenly looked up and perceived a stealthy interchange of looks of alarm between the other two, she got up and murmured something about going back to Caryl.
“Not yet,” said Lady Sarah, “you are not well enough yet to be teased by the boy. Sit still, and I will bring your tea out to you. Jack, fetch Miss Pembury’s cup, and mine too, there’s a good boy. And then go and ask Sir Robert if he will come and have some too.”
Jack hesitated, but she gave him another look, and he obeyed.
Within five minutes Rhoda was sitting with her tea-cup in her hand, Lady Sarah was beside her, and Jack was returning along the terrace with Sir Robert.