"Then who could it be?" she muttered, rising, and then with a quick shudder sitting down again. "Heaven help us, we seem to be in the midst of foes! What could be the motive? And why should the villain have selected you? Why pick you out?"
Thereupon a strange thing happened. Three pairs of English eyes met, and signaled a common message eye to eye. No word passed, but the message was "Van Tree!" When we had glanced at one another we looked all of us at our host--looked somewhat guiltily. He was deep in thought, his eyes on the stove; but he seemed to feel our gaze upon him, and he looked up abruptly. "Master Van Tree----" he said, and stopped.
"You know him well?" the Duchess said, appealing to him softly. We felt a kind of sorrow for him, and some delicacy, too, about accusing one of his countrymen of a thing so cowardly. "Do you think it is possible," she continued with an effort--"possible that he can have done this, Master Lindstrom?"
"I have known him from a boy," the merchant said, looking up, a hand on either knee, and speaking with a simplicity almost majestic, "and never knew him do a mean thing, madam. I know no more than that." And he looked round on us.
"That is a good deal; still, he went off in a fit of jealousy when Master Carey brought Dymphna home. We must remember that."
"Yes, I would he knew the rights of that matter," said the Dutchman heartily.
"And he has been hanging about the place all day," my lady persisted.
"Yes," Master Lindstrom rejoined patiently; "yet I do not think he did this."
"Then who did?" she said, somewhat nettled.
That was the question. I had my opinion, as I saw Master Bertie and the Duchess had. I did not doubt it was Van Tree. Yet a thought struck me. "It might be well," I suggested, "that some one should ask Mistress Anne whether the door was open when she left the room. She passed out just in front of me."