"Alas! alas!" murmured Lady Grace.
"You seem to overlook my feelings in this affair, Grace," he whispered, a deep hue dyeing his cheeks. "That she may have had something to do with it, her paying away the notes proves: and to find the wife of your bosom thus in league with another—— You don't know what it is, Grace."
"I can imagine it," she answered, the tears standing in her eyes, as she rose to answer his adieu. "Believe me, you have, and always have had, my deepest and truest sympathy; but Adela is my sister; what more can I say?"
Grace sat on, alone. The murmur of voices came to her from the adjacent room, but she heeded it not. She leaned her head upon her hand, and debated with herself. It was imperative that the real facts of the case should be brought to light; for if Charles Cleveland were permitted to stand his trial, perhaps to suffer the penalty of transportation, and it came out, later, that he was innocent, and her sister the guilty party, what a fearful position would be that of Adela!
Could Charley not be brought to confess through stratagem, mentally debated Grace. Suppose he were led to believe that Adela, to save him, had declared the truth, then he might speak. It was surely a good idea. Grace weighed it, in all its bearings, and thought the end would justify the means. But to whom entrust so delicate a mission? Not to Mr. Cleveland, he would betray it all to Charles at the first sentence; not Mr. Grubb; his high sense of honour would never let him intimate that Adela had confessed what she had not; not to Lady Mary, for her only idea of Newgate was that it was a place overflowing with infectious fevers, which she should inevitably bring home to baby. Lord Acorn? Somehow Grace could not ask him. Who next? Who else was there? Herself? Yes, and Grace felt that none were more fitted for the task than she was—she who had the subject so much at heart. And she resolved to go.
But she could not go alone to Newgate. Her mother ought to be with her. Now the matter, relative to the tracing of the notes to Adela, had been kept from Lady Acorn. Grace disclosed it to her in the emergency, and made her the confidante of what she meant to do.
Lady Acorn sat aghast. For once in her life she was terrified to silence and meekness. Grace obtained her consent, and the time for the expedition was fixed. Not that Lady Acorn relished it.
"If it be as you and your father believe, Grace, Master Charley Cleveland deserves the soundest shaking man ever had yet," cried she, when speech returned to her.
"Ah, mamma! Then what must Adela deserve?"
"To be in Newgate herself," tartly responded Lady Acorn.