“Might I be so bold as to put a question to your lordship?”
“Is it about Miss Blow or Dr. O’Grady?”
“It is,” said Patsy. “It’s about the both of them.”
“Out with it, then. That young woman and her relations with the doctor form quite the most interesting subject I know at present.”
“Did your lordship keep the truth from her?”
“I did my best not to, Patsy; but I think I may safely say that I did.”
Patsy pondered this saying. The meaning was not immediately obvious to him.
“It’s what Jimmy O’Loughlin was saying to me last night,” he said, “that if so be she heard that the doctor had left her, the creature’s heart would be broke, and her as handsome a young girl as any you’d see.”
“At the present moment,” said Lord Manton, “she believes that you and Jimmy O’Loughlin have murdered the doctor and concealed his body in a bog hole.”
“The Lord save us and deliver us! Was there ne’er another story you could tell her only that? Sure the police will be out after us.”