Rosamond smiled, then looked grave again. "I wish you could have told us a little more," she said. "But, as you can not, we must try Mrs. Pentreath and Mr. Munder next. Send them up here, if you please, Betsey, as soon as you get down stairs."
The examination of the housekeeper and the steward led to no result whatever. Nothing more than they had already communicated in their letter to Mrs. Frankland could be extracted from either of them. Mr. Munder's dominant idea was that the foreigner had entered the doors of Porthgenna Tower with felonious ideas on the subject of the family plate. Mrs. Pentreath concurred in that opinion, and mentioned, in connection with it, her own private impression that the lady in the quiet dress was an unfortunate person who had escaped from a mad-house. As to giving a word of advice, or suggesting a plan for solving the mystery, neither the housekeeper nor the steward appeared to think that the rendering of any assistance of that sort lay at all within their province. They took their own practical view of the suspicious conduct of the two strangers, and no mortal power could persuade them to look an inch beyond it.
"Oh, the stupidity, the provoking, impenetrable, pretentious stupidity of respectable English servants!" exclaimed Rosamond, when she and her husband were alone again. "No help, Lenny, to be hoped for from either of those two people. We have nothing to trust to now but the examination of the house to-morrow; and that resource may fail us, like all the rest. What can Doctor Chennery be about? Why did we not hear from him before we left West Winston?"
"Patience, Rosamond, patience. We shall see what the post brings to-morrow."
"Pray don't talk about patience, dear! My stock of that virtue was never a very large one, and it was all exhausted ten days ago, at least. Oh, the weeks and weeks I have been vainly asking myself—Why should Mrs. Jazeph warn me against going into the Myrtle Room? Is she afraid of my discovering a crime? or afraid of my tumbling through the floor? What did she want to do in the room, when she made that attempt to get into it? Why, in the name of wonder, should she know something about this house that I never knew, that my father never knew, that nobody else—"
"Rosamond!" cried Mr. Frankland, suddenly changing color, and starting in his chair—"I think I can guess who Mrs. Jazeph is!"
"Good gracious, Lenny! What do you mean?"
"Something in those last words of yours started the idea in my mind the instant you spoke. Do you remember, when we were staying at St. Swithin's-on-Sea, and talking about the chances for and against our prevailing on your father to live with us here—do you remember, Rosamond, telling me at that time of certain unpleasant associations which he had with the house, and mentioning among them the mysterious disappearance of a servant on the morning of your mother's death?"
Rosamond turned pale at the question. "How came we never to think of that before?" she said.
"You told me," pursued Mr. Frankland, "that this servant left a strange letter behind her, in which she confessed that your mother had charged her with the duty of telling a secret to your father—a secret that she was afraid to divulge, and that she was afraid of being questioned about. I am right, am I not, in stating those two reasons as the reasons she gave for her disappearance?"