'On the second floor?'
'Yes, lady, all the windows.'
'Look here, Barrymore,' said Lady Henrietta, sternly; 'we have made up our minds to have the truth out of you, so it will save you trouble to tell it sooner rather than later. Come, now! No lies! What were you doing at that window?'
The fellow looked at us in a helpless way, and she wrung her hands together like one who is in the last extremity of doubt and misery.
'I was doing no harm, sir. I was holding a candle to the window.'
'And why were you holding a candle to the window?'
'Don't ask me, Lady Henrietta--don't ask me! I give you my word, lady, that it is not my secret, and that I cannot tell it. If it concerned no one but myself I would not try to keep it from you.'
A sudden idea occurred to me, and I took the candle from the trembling hand of the butler.
'She must have been holding it as a signal,' said I. 'Let us see if there is any answer.' I held it as she had done, and stared out into the darkness of the night. Vaguely I could discern the black bank of the trees and the lighter expanse of the moor, for the moon was behind the clouds. And then I gave a cry of exultation, for a tiny pin-point of yellow light had suddenly transfixed the dark veil, and glowed steadily in the centre of the black square framed by the window.
'There it is!' I cried.
'No, no, lady, it is nothing--nothing at all!' the butler broke in; 'I assure you, lady ----'
'Move your light across the window, Watson!' cried the baronet. 'See, the other moves also! Now, you rascal, do you deny that it is a signal? Come, speak up! Who is your confederate out yonder, and what is this conspiracy that is going on?'
The woman's face became openly defiant.
'It is my business, and not yours. I will not tell.'
'Then you leave my employment right away.'
'Very good, sir. If I must I must.'
'And you go in disgrace. By thunder, you may well be ashamed of yourself. Your family has lived with mine for over a hundred years under this roof, and here I find you deep in some dark plot against me.'
'No, no, sir; no, not against you!' It was a man's voice, and Barrymore, paler and more horror-struck than his wife, was standing at the door. His bulky figure in a shawl and skirt might have been comic were it not for the intensity of feeling upon his face.
'We have to go, Eliza. This is the end of it. You can pack our things,' said the butler.
'Oh, Joan, Joan, have I brought you to this? It is my doing, Lady Henrietta--all mine. She has done nothing except for my sake and because I asked her.'
'Speak out, then! What does it mean?'
'My unhappy sister is starving on the moor. We cannot let her perish at our very gates. The light is a signal to her that food is ready for her, and her light out yonder is to show the spot to which to bring it.'
'Then your sister is --'
'The escaped convict, sir--Selden, the criminal.'
'That's the truth, sir,' said Barrymore. 'I said that it was not my secret and that I could not tell it to you. But now you have heard it, and you will see that if there was a plot it was not against you.'
This, then, was the explanation of the stealthy expeditions at night and the light at the window. Lady Henrietta and I both stared at the man in amazement. Was it possible that this stolidly respectable person was of the same blood as one of the most notorious criminals in the country?
'Yes, lady, my name was Selden, and she is my younger sister. We humoured her too much when she was a lass, and gave her her own way in everything until she came to think that the world was made for her pleasure, and that she could do what she liked in it. Then as she grew older she met wicked companions, and the devil entered into her until she broke my father's heart and dragged our name in the dirt. From crime to crime she sank lower and lower, until it is only the mercy of God which has snatched her from the scaffold; but to me, lady, she was always the little curly-headed girl that I had nursed and played with, as an elder brother would. That was why she broke prison, sir. She knew that I was here and that we could not refuse to help her. When she dragged herself here one night, weary and starving, with the warders hard at her heels, what could we do? We took her in and fed her and cared for her. Then you returned, lady, and my sister thought she would be safer on the moor than anywhere else until the hue and cry was over, so she lay in hiding there. But every second night we made sure if she was still there by putting a light in the window, and if there was an answer my wife took out some bread and meat to her. Every day we hoped that she was gone, but as long as she was there we could not desert her. That is the whole truth, as I am an honest Christian man, and you will see that if there is blame in the matter it does not lie with my wife, but with me, for whose sake she has done all that she has.'
The man's words came with an intense earnestness which carried conviction with them.
'Is this true, Barrymore?'
'Yes, Lady Henrietta. Every word of it.'