“Not only a friend,” said Miss Prince quickly, “but a relation, too. Miss Cheale is a distant cousin of Mr. Garlett’s. I’ve always supposed that that was why Mrs. Garlett left her that legacy.”
Lucy turned away, and perhaps it was as well that Miss Prince did not see the look that came over her face.
“Lucy? One word more. Has your mother heard from Mr. Guy Cheale lately? Does she know where he is, and what he’s doing?”
Lucy did not turn round, as a properly trained servant ought to have done.
“Mother heard from Mr. Cheale? Not that I know of. Why should she?”
Then she slipped out of the room and went down the stairs at such a pace that her mistress concluded she must have heard some one knocking at the back door.
Miss Prince began eating her now cold egg and bacon. She felt sick and shivery, yet she forced herself to eat, and after a while the food and her good China tea made her feel a little better. But even so she was in a miserable state of uncertainty.
With all her odious peculiarities she had a strict, if a narrow, sense of duty, and she could not make up her mind as to what she ought to do with regard to a sinister fact known to herself alone.
Miss Prince, for her misfortune, knew of a place in Terriford where arsenic could be found. And deep in her heart she was quite certain it was from that store or cache of arsenic that had been stolen the dose of poison which had killed Emily Garlett.
That store or cache of arsenic was here, in her own house, close by where she was now considering the difficult problem of what it was her duty to do.