Madam was slightly at bay: she seemed just a little flurried. Rallying her powers, she confronted Dr. Rane and told him that she did not think him skilful and did not personally like him; if she had been biassed against him, the feeling must have taken its rise in that--there was nothing else to cause it.
Another of her shuffling untruths--and they all knew it for one. But they would get nothing better from her.
The fact was this. Madam had feared that Mrs. Cumberland could, and perhaps would, throw light on a certain episode of the past years: a contingency madam had dreaded above anything earthly: for this she had wished and hoped to drive Mrs. Cumberland from the place, and had thought that if she could drive away Oliver Rane, his mother would follow him. That was the actual truth: but no living person, excepting madam, suspected it.
She quitted the room with the last denial, conscious that she did not just now appear to advantage--for the sneaking act of tracking them this night, madam, with all her sophistry, could not plead an excuse. They let her go. Even the Inspector did not pay her the courtesy of opening the door for her, or of lighting her down the crooked old wooden stairs. It was Bessy who ran to do it.
"When you found things were going against you, sir, why did you not declare the truth?" asked the Inspector of Dr. Rane.
"I knew that the moment I declared the truth, all hope of the tontine money would be at an end; I should have done what I had done for nothing," answered Dr. Rane. "Richard North undertook to give me timely notice if things went too far; but he was disabled, you know, and could not do so. Until they were in the act of disturbing the grave, I had no warning of it whatever."
A silence followed the answer. Dr. Rane resumed.
"Ill-luck seems to have attended it from the first. Perhaps nothing else was to be expected. Jelly's having seen my wife was a great misfortune. And then look at the delay as to the tontine money! Had the trustees paid it over at once, Bessy and I should have been safe away long ago."
"Where gone?" asked Mrs. Gass.
"To America. It is where we shall go now, in any case. As I have not the money to join Dr. Jones as partner, I dare say he will take me as an assistant."