"Where has Mr. Chandos gone?"
"To Warsall. He would like to discover the writer of the note to the police."
"You seem to be quite in his confidence," remarked Mrs. Penn.
"He told me so much—that he intended to ride thither. It was no very great amount of confidence."
"There are many things I don't like in this house," she continued, after an interval of silence. "What do you suppose they did last night? Actually locked us up in the east wing! Turned the key upon us! I was coming forth to see if I could find out what those police were doing, and I found myself a prisoner! Madam Hill's act and deed, that was."
"Indeed!" was my reply, not choosing to tell her that I had heard the order given by Mr. Chandos.
"Hill takes a vast deal too much upon herself. I thought it could be no one else, and taxed her with it, asking how she could presume to lock up me. She coolly replied that she had never thought of me at all in the affair, but of Mrs. Chandos, who was of a timid nature, and would not like the sight of policemen inside the house. Poor thing! she has cause," added Mrs. Penn, in a sort of self-soliloquy.
"Mrs. Chandos has!"
"No unhappy prisoner escaped from Portland Island, hiding his head anywhere to elude notice, has more cause to dread the detective officers of justice than she. Your friend, Harry Chandos, has the same. I would not lead the life of apprehension he does, for untold gold. Look at the skeleton it makes of him! he is consuming away with inward fever. You were surprised when that London physician was brought down to him; the household were surprised: I was not."
"How came you to be so deep in their secrets?"