"Mistaken!" retorted Mrs. Jones. "That wild face isn't one to be mistaken: I should like to see its fellow in Calne. Why Lord Hartledon don't have him taken up on suspicion of that murder, is odd to me."
"You'd better hold your tongue about that suspicion," interposed Mirrable. "I have cautioned you before, I shouldn't like to breathe a word against a desperate man; I should go about in fear that he might hear of it, and revenge himself."
In came the clerk. "I don't see a sign of any one about," he said; "and I'm sure whoever it was could not have had time to get away. You must have been mistaken, Mrs. Jones."
"Mistaken in what, pray?"
"That any man was there. You got confused, and fancied it, perhaps. As to Pike, he'd never dare come on my premises, whether by night or day. What were you doing at the window?"
"Listening," defiantly replied Mrs. Jones. "And now I'll just tell out what I've had in my head this long while, Mr. Gum, and know the reason of Nancy's slighting me in the way she does. What secret has she and Mary Mirrable got between them?"
"Secret?" repeated the clerk, whilst his wife gave a faint cry, and Mirrable turned her calm face on Mrs. Jones. "Have they a secret?"
"Yes, they have," raved Mrs. Jones, giving vent to her long pent-up emotion. "If they haven't, I'm blind and deaf. If I have come into your house once during the past year and found Mrs. Mirrable in it, and the two sitting and whispering, I've come ten times. This evening I came in at dusk; I turned the handle of the door and peeped into the best parlour, and there they were, nose and knees together, starting away from each other as soon as they saw me, Nance giving one of her faint cries, and the two making believe to have been talking of the weather. It's always so. And I want to know what secret they have got hold of, and whether I'm poison, that I can't be trusted with it."
Jabez Gum slowly turned his eyes on the two in question. His wife lifted her hands in deprecation at the idea that she should have a secret: Mirrable was laughing.
"Nancy's secret to-night, when you interrupted us, was telling me of a dream she had regarding Lord Hartledon, and of how she mistook Mr. Elster for him the morning he came down," cried the latter. "And if you have really been listening at the shutters since you went out, Mrs. Jones, you should by this time know how to pickle walnuts in the new way: for I declare that is all our conversation has been about since. You always were suspicious, you know, and you always will be."