“It’s this much my business, that if you break your promise I will tell your father all I know; and if you want proof that I do know, well I have in my pocket a letter I got from Eva Lesley last night, enclosing—another letter. Eva wrote to me in preference to Rex, not wanting to worry him, and—well, for other reasons.”
Trixie had grown pale, but she stood her ground. “I never touched anybody’s letters,” she said. “And how can you say any one did? People—accidents happen about letters sometimes.”
“Yes, they do; but there is such a thing as circumstantial evidence; and what is more, I, with my own hands, put the right note into the envelope addressed to Miss Wentworth that morning, as Rex was so hurried, and I laid it with the other one, stamped and directed to Miss Lesley, on the hall table.”
She grew paler and paler.
“I didn’t touch them,” she repeated.
“We have only your own word for it,” he said, scornfully; “and supposing Mabella Forsyth says you did? But I am wasting time upon you. I have warned you. Take your own way.”
“I won’t tell anything about this morning. I swear I won’t,” she said, in terror.
Five minutes later saw Imogen safe in her own room, thither escorted by Trixie, silent and panic-stricken. And an hour or so later, when Mrs Wentworth returned from a drive in the pony carriage, to which she had been invited by Florence, she was met by Colman with the news that Miss Imogen was in bed and asleep, her head was so bad. It was only to be hoped, added the maid, after the manner of her kind, that the young lady had not got a bad chill, and was not going to have a regular illness.
Mrs Wentworth spent the rest of the afternoon in her own room, which opened into Imogen’s, watching for her to awake. The anxiety almost absorbed all other feelings.
“How can I tell her?” she kept saying to herself. “And why, oh why did Florence not tell me before? And to think that he is actually back, and that she must meet him after, and I that have encouraged it. There is no one—no, not one creature—I can confide in. For Florence meant something when she begged me not to trust Miss Forsyth. But—oh dear, and how my darling Imogen warned me too!—but how could Major Winchester have been so careless, if the letter he is so annoyed about really was the one sent to Imogen; and how am I to tell her, and she perhaps sickening for brain fever or typhoid fever, or something?” The poor woman’s brain was in a whirl, for Florence had not dared to do more than warn her vaguely. It was a relief when, about six o’clock, an orange-coloured envelope was brought in by Colman.