“When I met him how long had he been staying with you at the Manor?”
“Only one day. He came on the previous morning, and he left an hour after you did. He wished to consult my father about something—some securities he contemplates purchasing, I think.”
“Was Ella acquainted with him?”
“No. Ella never saw him. He was upstairs in his room, you remember, when we brought her home, and she left in the morning before he was up.”
“You don’t think that it was he who met her in the park after she left me?” I suggested.
She looked at me strangely, as though endeavouring to read my innermost thoughts.
“No, I hardly think that. Why should he, of all men, attack a woman who was a perfect stranger to him?”
“But was Ella a perfect stranger?” I queried. “How do you know that?”
“Of course we can’t say so. He might have met her somewhere else before,” the dark-eyed girl was forced to admit.
“Do not the circumstances all point to the fact that she fled, fearing to face him?” I said.