"Mayn't I even tell Lady Ruth?" she asked. "She is very anxious, I know."

"Better not," he warned her. "It may be better for Sir David in the long-run, if his friends think him guilty a few days longer. It will be wisest if you let it appear that even you can hardly continue to cling to the idea of his innocence. You can be trusted to act a part where such great issues are involved, can you not? More may depend on it than you think."

"I'll be silent as the grave," she cried. "As the grave," she repeated more soberly, and turned away, reproaching herself silently, since in her anxiety for David her sorrow for her father had been a moment forgotten.

When Gimblet came down again, clean and refreshed, he found no one but his hostess, Lady Ruth Worsfold.

Lady Ruth's hair was white, in appearance she was short and squat, and she had a curiously disconnected habit of conversation, but for all that she was a person of great discernment, and uncommonly wide awake. She sided staunchly with Juliet in her belief in David's innocence.

"Never," she said, "will I credit such a thing of the lad. You may say what you like, Mr. Gimblet, you can prove till you're black in the face that he murdered every soul in the house, it won't make any difference to me."

"Who do you think did do it, Lady Ruth?" Gimblet asked.

"What do I know? An escaped lunatic, one of the keepers, the under housemaid, anyone you like. What does it matter? It wasn't David, even though his namesake did kill Goliath, and I always disliked the name, having suffered from a Biblical one myself. I said to his mother when he was born. 'For goodness' sake give the poor child a name he won't be expected to live up to. Just fancy how his friends will hate to be known as Jonathans, let alone thingamy's wife. You're laying up a scandal for your son,' I told her, and if my words haven't come true it's more thanks to him than to his parents. A nice pink and white baby he was, poor boy. There's just one good side to this dreadful affair," she went on without a pause, "and that is that the young lady with the dollars whom he was to have married, and hated the sight of, has thrown him over. The first least little breath of suspicion was enough for her, and the moment he was downright accused she was off. And he's well rid of her, dollars and all An Englishman of his birth and looks doesn't need to go to Chicago for a wife."




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