The servant pointed in the direction of the side hall. “In that part, sir. Either in the Dutch garden or the shrubbery. I am not sure which.”
It was plain, by this time, that the man’s information was too imperfect to be practically of any use. Julian asked if the lodge-keeper’s wife was in the house.
“No, sir. Her husband has gone out to search the grounds in her place, and she is minding the gate. They sent their boy with the message. From what I can make out from the lad, they would be thankful if they could get a word more of advice from you, sir.”
Julian reflected for a moment.
So far as he could estimate them, the probabilities were that the stranger from Mannheim had already made her way into the house; that she had been listening in the billiard-room; that she had found time enough to escape him on his approaching to open the door; and that she was now (in the servant’s phrase) “somewhere in the grounds,” after eluding the pursuit of the lodgekeeper’s wife.
The matter was serious. Any mistake in dealing with it might lead to very painful results.
If Julian had correctly anticipated the nature of the confession which Mercy had been on the point of addressing to him, the person whom he had been the means of introducing into the house was—what she had vainly asserted herself to be—no other than the true Grace Roseberry.
Taking this for granted, it was of the utmost importance that he should speak to Grace privately, before she committed herself to any rashly renewed assertion of her claims, and before she could gain access to Lady Janet’s adopted daughter. The landlady at her lodgings had already warned him that the object which she held steadily in view was to find her way to “Miss Roseberry” when Lady Janet was not present to take her part, and when no gentleman were at hand to protect her. “Only let me meet her face to face” (she had said), “and I will make her confess herself the impostor that she is!” As matters now stood, it was impossible to estimate too seriously the mischief which might ensue from such a meeting as this. Everything now depended on Julian’s skillful management of an exasperated woman; and nobody, at that moment, knew where the woman was.
In this position of affairs, as Julian understood it, there seemed to be no other alternative than to make his inquiries instantly at the lodge and then to direct the search in person.
He looked toward Mercy’s chair as he arrived at this resolution. It was at a cruel sacrifice of his own anxieties and his own wishes that he deferred continuing the conversation with her from the critical point at which Lady Janet’s appearance had interrupted it.