Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/528

 520 “Oh no. Rhode says it is a young woman come after the place. She has taken her into the kitchen and wished me to ask if you would please to see her.”

Miss Chesney looked as though she scarcely understood. “A young woman come after the place!” she repeated. “Why it is not an hour since Rhode told me she must leave! Ring the bell, Lucy.”

Rhode came in, in answer. Miss Chesney requested an explanation with quiet dignity, and Rhode turned red, and put on a defiant look, as if she could be again insolent if she saw fit.

“I have made up my mind to it some days, Miss Chesney, and I daresay I may have spoken of it abroad. The young woman says Mrs. Fitch at the Lion told her of the place.”

“Show the young woman into the dining room,” said Miss Chesney. And she proceeded thither, encountering Pompey on her way, who informed her of the termination of the inquest, and its result.

In the dining-room stood Judith Ford. She had come straight up as soon as the inquest was over. Neatly dressed in good mourning, steady in demeanour, her face full of sense and thought, Jane Chesney took a fancy to her at the first glance. Judith gave a few particulars as to herself, concluding with observing that she had been informed by Mrs. Fitch it was a housemaid who was required, but the servant Rhode had now told her it was a cook.

“In point of fact, it may be said to be both,” replied Miss Chesney. “We require a servant who can undertake both duties—a maid-of-all-work, as it is called. We are gentlepeople and highly connected,” she hastened to add, not in a spirit of proud, mistaken boasting, but as if it were due to their own dignity to explain so far; “but my father, Captain Chesney, has a very limited income, which obliges us to keep as few servants as possible. Could you take such a place?”

Judith reflected a moment before giving her reply. In her time she had lived in the capacity of cook and was equal to its duties, but it was not the place she would have preferred.

“Should I be the only servant kept, ma'am?” she enquired, feeling, in the midst of her demur, that she should like much the gentle lady before her for a mistress.

“The only maid servant. We keep a man who attends on papa and waits at table; he helps a good deal also in the kitchen, gets in coal, cleans the knives, and such-like; and he answers the door in a general way. I do not think you would find the work too much.”

“I think I might venture upon it,” observed Judith, half in soliloquy. “I once lived sole in a place. It was a gentleman’s family, ma'am, too. I have never served in any other.”

“We could not take a servant from a tradesperson’s family,” returned Miss Chesney, who was deeply intrenched in her aristocratic prejudices. Where is it that you say you are staying?”

“Number fourteen, Palace Street.”

The sound struck on Miss Chesney’s ear.

“Number fourteen, Palace Street! Why! that must be close to the house where that sad tragedy has just taken place!”

“It is next door to it, ma'am,” was Judith’s answer.

All Jane Chesney’s curiosity, all her marvel—and the best of us possess a good share of it—was aroused. “Did you see the young lady?” she inquired, quite breathless in her interest.

“I saw her several times; I was with her,” was Judith’s answer. “Mr. Stephen Grey could not get the nurse for her that he wished, and he was glad that I could be with her; he saw a great deal of me, ma'am, in my last place.”

“It was a terrible thing,” remarked Miss Chesney.

“It was an awful thing,” said Judith, “wherever the blame may lie.”

“That of course lies with Mr. Stephen Grey. There cannot be two opinions upon it.”

“There can, ma'am,” dissented Judith, in an impressive but respectful manner. “The jury—to go no further—were of a different opinion.”

“I can understand their verdict; that is, understand the feeling which prompted them to return it. They did not like to bring in one against their fellow townsman. Mr. Stephen has been so much respected in the town—as I hear; but we are little more than strangers in South Wennock.”

“The case is altogether shrouded in unaccountable mystery,” said Judith, her own voice assuming unconsciously a lower tone as she spoke. “It may come to light some time; I trust it will; whenever it does I am sure it will be found that Mr. Stephen Grey was innocent.”

“Do you think there was no mistake made in the medicine?”

“I feel persuaded there was none; that it was sent out from Mr. Stephen Grey’s pure. That the young lady was murdered,—as deliberately and wickedly murdered as anybody ever was in this world, is my firm belief.”

“By whom?”

“Ah, ma'am, there it all lies. That is the mystery that nobody can fathom.