"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

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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.




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