The first words, when we had taken our seats, were spoken by my lady.
"Sergeant Cuff," she said, "there was perhaps some excuse for the
inconsiderate manner in which I spoke to you half an hour since. I have
no wish, however, to claim that excuse. I say, with perfect sincerity,
that I regret it, if I wronged you."
The grace of voice and manner with which she made him that atonement
had its due effect on the Sergeant. He requested permission to justify
himself--putting his justification as an act of respect to my mistress.
It was impossible, he said, that he could be in any way responsible for
the calamity, which had shocked us all, for this sufficient reason, that
his success in bringing his inquiry to its proper end depended on his
neither saying nor doing anything that could alarm Rosanna Spearman.
He appealed to me to testify whether he had, or had not, carried that
object out. I could, and did, bear witness that he had. And there, as I
thought, the matter might have been judiciously left to come to an end.
Sergeant Cuff, however, took it a step further, evidently (as you shall
now judge) with the purpose of forcing the most painful of all possible
explanations to take place between her ladyship and himself.
"I have heard a motive assigned for the young woman's suicide," said
the Sergeant, "which may possibly be the right one. It is a motive quite
unconnected with the case which I am conducting here. I am bound to
add, however, that my own opinion points the other way. Some unbearable
anxiety in connexion with the missing Diamond, has, I believe, driven
the poor creature to her own destruction. I don't pretend to know what
that unbearable anxiety may have been. But I think (with your ladyship's
permission) I can lay my hand on a person who is capable of deciding
whether I am right or wrong."
"Is the person now in the house?" my mistress asked, after waiting a
little.
"The person has left the house," my lady.
That answer pointed as straight to Miss Rachel as straight could be. A
silence dropped on us which I thought would never come to an end. Lord!
how the wind howled, and how the rain drove at the window, as I sat
there waiting for one or other of them to speak again!
"Be so good as to express yourself plainly," said my lady. "Do you refer
to my daughter?"
"I do," said Sergeant Cuff, in so many words.
My mistress had her cheque-book on the table when we entered the
room--no doubt to pay the Sergeant his fee. She now put it back in the
drawer. It went to my heart to see how her poor hand trembled--the hand
that had loaded her old servant with benefits; the hand that, I pray
God, may take mine, when my time comes, and I leave my place for ever!