"Certainly her manner is suggestive," assented Ella. "But look at her distress: how shall we get anything more from her?"
"That is just the point we have to consider," said Conroy.
"Of one thing I am persuaded--that she would never tell me what is not true."
"Under ordinary circumstances, no; I believe that. But she may be forced into it by Aaron and the rest of the conspirators."
"Oh, Edward! Conspirators! Poor old Aaron!"
"Well, my dear, time will show. If that old man has not a weighty secret on his back, tell me that my name is not Conroy."
For a few days, after this, things went on at the Hall in their usual state of quiet monotony: perhaps we might say dis-quiet, could the minds of some of its inmates have been read. Old Dorothy went about her duties in a dazed manner: but nothing more was said to her.
Gradually, finding herself let alone, the scare, which seemed to have taken up its abode permanently on her face, began to leave it.
"The young mistress must see that I can tell nothing," she told herself, "and she won't frighten me again by asking me to. Why should innocent folks suffer for the guilty? If that Dexter woman and that horrid Jago had but never come anigh this miserable house!"
Late one afternoon, when the sun had set and the dusk of the January evening was drawing on, there was heard a soft knock at the outer door, which opened from the kitchen corridor into the shrubbery at the back of the Hall.