"Where was your mistress the night before Dr. Grant came here, and she was so very sick?"
"I don't know, sir. I had the impression that she at your mother's. Wasn't she there?" and Esther looked very innocent, while Wilford replied:
"It is your business to answer questions, not to ask them. Tell me then the particulars of her going away, and what she said."
As nearly as she could remember Esther repeated what had passed between herself and Katy that morning, but her manner was such as to convince Wilford she was keeping back something, and in a paroxysm of excitement he seized her arm, exclaiming:
"You know more than you admit. Tell me then the truth. Who came home with Mrs. Cameron, and when?"
Esther was afraid of Wilford, and at last between tears and sobs confessed that Mrs. Wilford said she had been out of town, but asked her not to tell, that she guessed it was Silverton where she had been, and also that when she opened the door to her, Dr. Morris was going down the steps; "not in a hurry—not like making off as if there was something wrong," she added, in her eagerness to exonerate her mistress.
"Who hinted there was anything wrong?" Wilford exclaimed, in tones which made poor Esther tremble, for now that he had heard all he cared to hear, he began to be ashamed of having gained his information in the way he had.
"Nobody hinted," Esther sobbed, with her face hidden in her apron; "and if they did it's false. There never was a truer, sweeter lady."
"See that you stick to that whatever may occur, and, mind you, let there be no repeating this conversation in the kitchen or elsewhere," Wilford hurled at her savagely, going next to a telegraph office, and sending over the wires the following:
NEW YORK, March —, 1862.
To MR. EPHRAIM BARLOW, Silverton, Mass.
Has Mrs. Wilford Cameron been in Silverton since last September?
W. CAMERON.