"Yes, indeed, and indeed! God help her, poor innocent lamb! You need not think to keep anything dark in future, you and your wretched master! In her delirium the unhappy creature has let out everything. And you—you must have known! You who came here with her as his spy! Mounting guard over her night and day, lest she should let her people know of his diabolical cruelty. I have outwitted you, and now I know everything. I shall find means to protect my injured child!"
"I have no idea what you mean, ma'am," replied Grover, inflexibly respectful.
"Oh, no, of course not! You may as well drop the mask. I know you, and I know him," was the instant retort, as Mrs. Mynors, in her elegant wrapper, disappeared into her own room.
Grover went about all that day racking her brains as to what she ought to do. She was quite confident that she had been turned out of the room in order that these revelations—in which she did not believe—might be made, or be said to have been made. They were part, she was sure, of some plot or scheme which was being hatched. Ought she to write to Mr. Gaunt, and tell him that she thought he had better come to Worthing and take his wife home? She was a slow-witted, but very sensible woman, and she feared that, should she take such a course, Gaunt might fear that things were more serious than they actually were. Yet she distrusted Mrs. Mynors profoundly, and watched her as closely as she could. She overheard her say to the doctor, outside Virginia's room:
"She ought to be kept very quiet; her nerves are all wrong. Mind you make her stay in bed as long as you can. Don't let her think of travelling till next week at the soonest."
She also saw her come out of the sick-room with the letter just written by Virginia to Gaunt in her hand. She carried it into her own room, and something in the way she looked at it produced in Grover an overpowering impression that she did not mean to forward it.
With a determination to ascertain, the woman knocked at the door some minutes later, and was sure she heard the rustle of paper and the hasty closing of a drawer before Mrs. Mynors told her to come in.
"Beg pardon, ma'am, but should I take Mrs. Gaunt's letter to post? It's almost time."
"Thanks, I have just sent it off."
This made the servant certain that her suspicion was correct. She went slowly into Virginia's room, more and more perplexed as to what she ought to do, and wondering what were her mistress's own feelings in the matter. Since the Bignor episode, she had been so shaken in her faith in Virginia that she was half ready to believe that it was a case of like mother, like daughter, and that the dainty butterfly would never return to gloomy Omberleigh. The idea filled her with resentment. "His fault," she muttered to herself. "Such a place, enough to give you a fit of the blues, dirty and dull and drab; he ought to have had it all done up for her—make her think that he wanted to please her! He don't know enough to go indoors when it rains, not where a woman's concerned, that's very certain. But, oh, gracious goodness, what will happen to him if she turns out a light one? It's my belief he'd never stand it. He'd go mad or cut his throat."