“I am the housekeeper.”

Mr. Blake was a bachelor.

“And you were wakened last night by hearing whispering which seemed to come from this girl’s room.”

“Yes, I at first thought it was the folks next door,—­we often hear them when they are unusually noisy,—­but soon I became assured it came from her room; and more astonished than I could say,—­She is a good girl,” she broke in, suddenly looking at me with hotly indignant eyes, “a—­a—­as good a girl as this whole city can show; don’t you dare, any of you, to hint at anything else o—­”

“Come, come,” I said soothingly, a little ashamed of my too communicative face, “I haven’t said anything, we will take it for granted she is as good as gold, go on.”

The woman wiped her forehead with a hand that trembled like a leaf.  “Where was I?” said she.  “O, I heard voices and was surprised and got up and went to her door.  The noise I made unlocking my own must have startled her, for all was perfectly quiet when I got there.  I waited a moment, then I turned the knob and called her:  she did not reply and I called again.  Then she came to the door, but did not unlock it.  ‘What is it?’ she asked.  ‘O,’ said I, ’I thought I heard talking here and I was frightened,’ ‘It must have been next door,’ said she.  I begged pardon and went back to my room.  There was no more noise, but when in the morning we broke into her room and found her gone, the window open and signs of distress and struggle around, I knew I had not been mistaken; that there were men with her when I went to her door, and that they had carried her off—­”

This time I could not restrain myself.

“Did they drop her out of the window?” I inquired.

“O,” said she, “we are building an extension, and there is a ladder running up to the third floor, and it was by means of that they took her.”

“Indeed! she seems at least to have been a willing victim,” I remarked.

The woman clutched my arm with a grip like iron.  “Don’t you believe it,” gasped she, stopping me in the street where we were.  “I tell you if what I say is true, and these burglars or whatever they were, did carry her off, it was an agony to her, an awful, awful thing that will kill her if it has not done so already.  You don’t know what you are talking about, you never saw her—­”

“Was she pretty,” I asked, hurrying the woman along, for more than one passer-by had turned their heads to look at us.  The question seemed in some way to give her a shock.

“Ah, I don’t know,” she muttered; “some might not think so, I always did; it depended upon the way you looked at her.”

For the first time I felt a thrill of anticipation shoot through my veins.  Why, I could not say.  Her tone was peculiar, and she spoke in a sort of brooding way as though she were weighing something in her own mind; but then her manner had been peculiar throughout.  Whatever it was that aroused my suspicion, I determined henceforth to keep a very sharp eye upon her ladyship.  Levelling a straight glance at her face, I asked her how it was that she came to be the one to inform the authorities of the girl’s disappearance.