“Well, I hope you may be right,” said Miss Grantham. “My only fear is that she may have hired the Bow Street Runners to find Phoebe.”
This suggestion was so appalling that Lady Bellingham sank plump into a chair. “My love, don’t say such a thing! Oh dear, what have you done? Only think of the scandal if the law officers were to come to this house! We shall all be prosecuted!”
“My dear ma’am, there is not the least likelihood of such a thing happening. No one knows of any circumstance connecting me with Phoebe, and Adrian must be quite above suspicion.”
But the idea, once instilled into Lady Bellingham’s brain, took such strong possession of it that it might well have brought on her dreaded spasms had it riot been ousted by a far more pressing threat.
The following morning’s post brought Miss Grantham a curt communication from Mr Ravenscar.
It was handed to her as she sat at breakfast with her aunt and her protégée. She did not recognize the handwriting, which was very black and firm, and the crest on the seal was equally strange to her. She turned it over idly, broke open the seal, and spread out the single, crackling sheet of paper.
She was eating a slice of bread-and-butter as she ran her eye down the missive, and startled her aunt by choking suddenly. She let a hasty exclamation escape her, swallowed a stray crumb, which found its way into her windpipe, and fell into helpless coughing. By the time she had been restored by having her back briskly slapped by her aunt, all the impropriety of disclosing the contents of her letter in Miss Laxton’s presence had been recollected, and she sat with it in her lap throughout the rest of the meal. Lady Bellingham noticed that she was unusually silent, and saw that her eyes were smouldering and her cheeks unduly flushed. Her heart sank, for she knew these signs. “My love, I do trust you have not received some bad news?” she said nervously.
“Bad news, ma’am?” said Miss Grantham, sitting ver5 straight in her chair. “Oh, dear me, no! Nothing of that nature!”
Lady Bellingham’s alarms were not in the least allayed by this assurance, and she sat fidgeting until Phoebe presently left the table. When the door had shut behind her, her ladyship fixed her eyes on Deborah’s martial countenance, and demanded: “What is it? If I am not to be laid upon my bed with the vapours, tell me the worst at once! The Laxtons have discovered that child’s whereabouts?”
“This obliging letter,” said Deborah, looking at it with loathing, “does not come from the Laxtons. It comes from Mr Ravenscar.”