“I didn’t do it!” he cried piteously. “It was all Mr. Bygrave.”
“You acknowledge, sir, that Mr. Bygrave deceived me?” proceeded Mrs. Lecount. “I am glad to hear that. You will be all the readier to make the next discovery which is waiting for you—the discovery that Mr. Bygrave has deceived you. He is not here to slip through my fingers now, and I am not the helpless woman in this place that I was at Aldborough. Thank God!”
She uttered that devout exclamation through her set teeth. All her hatred of Captain Wragge hissed out of her lips in those two words.
“Oblige me, sir, by holding one side of my traveling-bag,” she resumed, “while I open it and take something out.”
The interior of the bag disclosed a series of neatly-folded papers, all laid together in order, and numbered outside. Mrs. Lecount took out one of the papers, and shut up the bag again with a loud snap of the spring that closed it.
“At Aldborough, Mr. Noel, I had only my own opinion to support me,” she remarked. “My own opinion was nothing against Miss Bygrave’s youth and beauty, and Mr. Bygrave’s ready wit. I could only hope to attack your infatuation with proofs, and at that time I had not got them. I have got them now! I am armed at all points with proofs; I bristle from head to foot with proofs; I break my forced silence, and speak with the emphasis of my proofs. Do you know this writing, sir?”
He shrank back from the paper which she offered to him.
“I don’t understand this,” he said, nervously. “I don’t know what you want, or what you mean.”
Mrs. Lecount forced the paper into his hand. “You shall know what I mean, sir, if you will give me a moment’s attention,” she said. “On the day after you went away to St. Crux, I obtained admission to Mr. Bygrave’s house, and I had some talk in private with Mr. Bygrave’s wife. That talk supplied me with the means to convince you which I had wanted to find for weeks and weeks past. I wrote you a letter to say so—I wrote to tell you that I would forfeit my place in your service, and my expectations from your generosity, if I did not prove to you when I came back from Switzerland that my own private suspicion of Miss Bygrave was the truth. I directed that letter to you at St. Crux, and I posted it myself. Now, Mr. Noel, read the paper which I have forced into your hand. It is Admiral Bartram’s written affirmation that my letter came to St. Crux, and that he inclosed it to you, under cover to Mr. Bygrave, at your own request. Did Mr. Bygrave ever give you that letter? Don’t agitate yourself, sir! One word of reply will do—Yes or No.”
He read the paper, and looked up at her with growing bewilderment and fear. She obstinately waited until he spoke. “No,” he said, faintly; “I never got the letter.”