"
Lady Lundie rose excitedly to her feet. There was but one place that a
stranger could go to at Craig Fernie. "The inn!" exclaimed her ladyship.
"She has gone to the inn!"
Hester Dethridge waited immovably. Lady Lundie put a last precautionary
question, in these words:
"Have you reported what you have seen to any body else?"
An affirmative reply. Lady Lundie had not bargained for that. Hester
Dethridge (she thought) must surely have misunderstood her.
"Do you mean that you have told somebody else what you have just told
me?"
Another affirmative reply.
"A person who questioned you, as I have done?"
A third affirmative reply.
"Who was it?"
Hester Dethridge wrote on her slate: "Miss Blanche."
Lady Lundie stepped back, staggered by the discovery that Blanche's
resolution to trace Anne Silvester was, to all appearance, as firmly
settled as her own. Her step-daughter was keeping her own counsel, and
acting on her own responsibility--her step-daughter might be an awkward
obstacle in the way. The manner in which Anne had left the house had
mortally offended Lady Lundie. An inveterately vindictive woman, she had
resolved to discover whatever compromising elements might exist in the
governess's secret, and to make them public property (from a paramount
sense of duty, of course) among her own circle of friends.
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