"Ah! I heerd of it, to be sure!" said the gardener. "But I was down in the country when all them things took place—I was there for some months. Do you think——"
"No—it could not be!" interrupted Dunstable: "for it was well known at the time that Lydia decamped with Lady Ravensworth's jewel-box."
Colonel Cholmondeley turned away, and said nothing: he remembered the evidences of desperate enmity between Adeline and Lydia, which had come within his own cognisance; and a vague—a very vague, distant, and undefined suspicion that the corpse just discovered might indeed be that of Lydia Hutchinson, entered his mind. But he speedily banished it: for the idea that Lady Ravensworth could have had any thing to do with the murder of Lydia did not seem tenable for a moment.
"As your lordship says," observed the old gardener, after a long pause, and now addressing himself to Dunstable, "it can't have any thing to do with that young o'oman who was here a few weeks as my lady's maid—'cos it's well knowed that she bolted off with the jewel-casket, as your lordship says."
Here Cholmondeley advanced towards Dunstable, took him by the arm, and, leading him aside, said in a hasty whisper, "Let us leave this matter where it is. Should the body just discovered be really that of Lydia Hutchinson, who disappeared so strangely, it would be very annoying for us to have to explain to a Coroner's jury all we know about her and Lady Ravensworth."
"Truly so," answered Dunstable. "And, after all, it is no affair of ours."
This understanding being arrived at, the nobleman and his friend returned to the table, where they helped themselves to some champagne to allay, as they said, the disagreeable sensations produced by the sudden interruption which their mirth had experienced.
The day seemed to be marked out by destiny as one on which various adventures were to occur in respect to the excursion party to Ravensworth Hall.
It will be remembered that Sir Rupert Harborough and Chichester had left the drawing-room for the purpose of seeing the vehicles got ready with the least possible delay.
The two friends—whom the associated roguery of many years had rendered as intimate as even brothers could be—proceeded down stairs, and, after some little trouble, found their way to the servants' offices. Guided by a sound of voices, they threaded a passage, and at length found themselves on the threshold of the room where the gardener's wife, the stranger who had first discovered the body, the seedy coachman, the lacquey, and the groom, were still discussing the incident that had so recently occurred.