Mr. Munder hesitated. Uncle Joseph, who had paused for a minute when Sarah directed his attention to the whispering at the upper end of the room, now drew her on slowly with him to the door. "Betzee, my dear," he said, addressing the maid, with perfect coolness and composure, "we are strangers here; will you be so kind to us as to show the way out?"
Betsey looked at the housekeeper, who motioned to her to appeal for orders to the steward. Mr. Munder was sorely tempted, for the sake of his own importance, to insist on instantly carrying out the violent measures to which he had threatened to have recourse; but Mrs. Pentreath's objections made him pause in spite of himself.
"Betzee, my dear," repeated Uncle Joseph, "has all this talking been too much for your ears? has it made you deaf?"
"Wait!" cried Mr. Munder, impatiently. "I insist on your waiting, Sir!"
"You insist? Well, well, because you are an uncivil man is no reason why I should be an uncivil man too. We will wait a little, Sir, if you have any thing more to say." Making that concession to the claims of politeness, Uncle Joseph walked gently backward and forward with his niece in the passage outside the door. "Sarah, my child, I have frightened the man of the big words," he whispered. "Try not to tremble so much; we shall soon be out in the fresh air again."
In the mean time, Mr. Munder continued his whispered conversation with the housekeeper, making a desperate effort, in the midst of his perplexities, to maintain his customary air of patronage and his customary assumption of superiority. "There is a great deal of truth, ma'am," he softly began—"a great deal of truth, certainly, in what you say. But you are talking of the woman, while I am talking of the man. Do you mean to tell me that I am to let him go, after what has happened, without at least insisting on his giving me his name and address?"
"Do you put trust enough in the foreigner to believe that he would give you his right name and address if you asked him?" inquired Mrs. Pentreath. "With submission to your better judgment, I must confess that I don't. But supposing you were to detain him and charge him before the magistrate—and how you are to do that, the magistrate's house being, I suppose, about a couple of hours' walk from here, is more than I can tell—you must surely risk offending Mrs. Frankland by detaining the woman and charging the woman as well; for after all, Mr. Munder, though I believe the foreigner to be capable of any thing, it was the woman that took the keys, was it not?"
"Quite so! quite so!" said Mr. Munder, whose sleepy eyes were now opened to this plain and straightforward view of the case for the first time. "I was, oddly enough, putting that point to myself, Mrs. Pentreath, just before you happened to speak of it. Just so! just so!"
"I can't help thinking," continued the housekeeper, in a mysterious whisper, "that the best plan, and the plan most in accordance with our instructions, is to let them both go, as if we did not care to demean ourselves by any more quarreling or arguing with them, and to have them followed to the next place they stop at. The gardener's boy, Jacob, is weeding the broad walk in the west garden this afternoon. These people have not seen him about the premises, and need not see him, if they are let out again by the south door. Jacob is a sharp lad, as you know; and, if he was properly instructed, I really don't see—"
"It is a most singular circumstance, Mrs. Pentreath," interposed Mr. Munder, with the gravity of consummate assurance; "but when I first sat down to this table, that idea about Jacob occurred to me. What with the effort of speaking, and the heat of argument, I got led away from it in the most unaccountable manner—"