"How are you to find the place?" I inquired.
"I am sorry to disappoint you," said the Sergeant--"but that's a secret
which I mean to keep to myself."
(Not to irritate your curiosity, as he irritated mine, I may here
inform you that he had come back from Frizinghall provided with a
search-warrant. His experience in such matters told him that Rosanna was
in all probability carrying about her a memorandum of the hiding-place,
to guide her, in case she returned to it, under changed circumstances
and after a lapse of time. Possessed of this memorandum, the Sergeant
would be furnished with all that he could desire.) "Now, Mr. Betteredge," he went on, "suppose we drop speculation, and get
to business. I told Joyce to have an eye on Rosanna. Where is Joyce?"
Joyce was the Frizinghall policeman, who had been left by Superintendent
Seegrave at Sergeant Cuff's disposal. The clock struck two, as he put
the question; and, punctual to the moment, the carriage came round to
take Miss Rachel to her aunt's.
"One thing at a time," said the Sergeant, stopping me as I was about to
send in search of Joyce. "I must attend to Miss Verinder first."
As the rain was still threatening, it was the close carriage that
had been appointed to take Miss Rachel to Frizinghall. Sergeant Cuff
beckoned Samuel to come down to him from the rumble behind.
"You will see a friend of mine waiting among the trees, on this side
of the lodge gate," he said. "My friend, without stopping the carriage,
will get up into the rumble with you. You have nothing to do but to hold
your tongue, and shut your eyes. Otherwise, you will get into trouble."
With that advice, he sent the footman back to his place. What Samuel
thought I don't know. It was plain, to my mind, that Miss Rachel was to
be privately kept in view from the time when she left our house--if
she did leave it. A watch set on my young lady! A spy behind her in the
rumble of her mother's carriage! I could have cut my own tongue out for
having forgotten myself so far as to speak to Sergeant Cuff.
The first person to come out of the house was my lady. She stood aside,
on the top step, posting herself there to see what happened. Not a word
did she say, either to the Sergeant or to me. With her lips closed, and
her arms folded in the light garden cloak which she had wrapped round
her on coming into the air, there she stood, as still as a statue,
waiting for her daughter to appear.
In a minute more, Miss Rachel came downstairs--very nicely dressed in
some soft yellow stuff, that set off her dark complexion, and clipped
her tight (in the form of a jacket) round the waist. She had a smart
little straw hat on her head, with a white veil twisted round it. She
had primrose-coloured gloves that fitted her hands like a second skin.
Her beautiful black hair looked as smooth as satin under her hat. Her
little ears were like rosy shells--they had a pearl dangling from each
of them. She came swiftly out to us, as straight as a lily on its stem,
and as lithe and supple in every movement she made as a young cat.
Nothing that I could discover was altered in her pretty face, but her
eyes and her lips. Her eyes were brighter and fiercer than I liked to
see; and her lips had so completely lost their colour and their smile
that I hardly knew them again. She kissed her mother in a hasty and
sudden manner on the cheek. She said, "Try to forgive me, mamma"--and
then pulled down her veil over her face so vehemently that she tore it.
In another moment she had run down the steps, and had rushed into the
carriage as if it was a hiding-place.