“How? What do you mean?” exclaimed Mrs Norton.
“I’ve managed to get the stuff made up at two places, ma’am,” whispered Jane. “One lot’s fetched by the footman from one chemist’s, at Marshton, and I get the gardener to go to another chemist’s for the other. I only had to send the doctor’s paper, and the medicine comes just like what Sir Murray knows is sent for.”
“Well,” exclaimed Ada, impatiently.
“Well, ’m,” whispered Jane, “that which her ladyship takes I keep locked up, and that which stands on the dressing-table gets poured out of the window, a little at a time, upon the flower-beds.”
Ada Norton sat silently gazing at Jane for a few minutes before she spoke.
“Jane,” she said, “this is a fearful charge!” and she shuddered. “I must think about it, and before many hours I will come over to the Castle, and see either Sir Murray or Lady Gernon. Do not be afraid; I will not implicate you in any way. I must see Mr Elstree, and I will try to make some plan—to arrange something definite; but your words have confused me—almost taken away my breath. The thing seems so monstrous, and even now I cannot believe it true! But I should not feel that I had done my duty if, after what you have said, I did not take some steps; so rest assured that I will do something, and at once.”
Jane rose to go, and, trembling and excited, Ada Norton sat for some hours, pondering whether she should ask her husband’s advice, ending by putting it off till the next day, when it happened that it was out of her power.
Not at Home.
“Did you see the laird?” said McCray, coming slowly forth from behind some bushes, after Jane had been standing some few minutes in the lane where she had left him to wait.