Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/368

 17, 1864.] but an instinct flashed across me that he would not like to find he had been watched; not that when I peeped in I had thought of doing anything mean or underhanded. I just drew up against the wall on the landing—the worst place I could have got to, for the moonlight came in upon my face—and he saw me. He could see nothing of me but my face; but he looked at me with a sort of frightened glare. My eyes, accustomed to the dark, could just discern his face: he had come from the lighted room. ‘Who and what are you?’ he whispered, but I thought my best plan was not to answer. I did not like to go forward and speak, so I kept still. He wheeled round, and went back to the sitting-room to bring out the light, which gave me the opportunity to slip inside the closet. He"

“Oh, Judith!” interrupted Lady Jane, “then the man’s face on the stairs, about which so much has been said, was yours!”

“My own and no other’s, my lady. I was afraid to explain so, lest I should be questioned further, and I let it pass. Mr. Carlton brought out the light, but of course he could not see me, and, after he had looked all about, he went down-stairs. I heard him say something to Mrs. Gould about a man up-stairs with black whiskers, and I laughed to myself at the joke. But I did not care that anyone should know I had played it, though it had been unintentionally done, and when Mr. Carlton was gone and the women were shut up in the kitchen again, I stole down-stairs and took off the black plush ears in the yard, and put them in my pocket. I then knocked at the window, as if I had just come in, which startled them both, and Mrs. Gould called me a fool, and asked why I could not come into the house quiet and decent. I said I had come in to wish Mrs. Crane good night, and I went on up-stairs. Mrs. Crane laughed at my swollen face, saying it looked like a full moon; but I thought how much more she would have laughed had she seen it in the whiskers.”

Frederick Grey, who had stood with his eyes fixed on Judith, listening to every word, interrupted with a question.

“Did you not suspect, did it not occur to you to suspect, that the draught might have been tampered with?”

“Never, sir, for a moment. How was I likely to suspect such a thing? Was not Mr. Carlton a doctor in practice? I did not know that he had added anything to the draught, but if I had known it, I should only have supposed it to be some alteration he deemed necessary, as her attendant, to make.”

“Well, go on.”

“I left them, and went in-doors to bed, and the next morning Margaret told me that Mrs. Crane had died; died the previous night before ten o’clock, through taking the sleeping draught sent her by Mr. Stephen Grey. I don’t know how I felt, I could not tell it if I tried, or the dreadful doubt that came over me, whether or not Mr. Carlton had touched it. I heard of his having smelt poison in the draught when it first came, and I thought then of course the poison must have been in it, that when I saw him all alone with the bottle open, he might only be smelling at it again. Of one thing I felt certain—that Mr. Stephen Grey had not committed the error—and the state of mind, the uncertainty I was in until the inquest, no tongue could tell. I went to the inquest; I wanted to be at ease one way or the other, to have some relief from my perplexity. Young Frederick Grey—I beg your pardon, Mr. Frederick; I had got my thoughts cast back in the past—had whispered to me, that if anybody mixed poison with the draught, it was Mr. Carlton, not his father; and though I would not listen to him, his words made a deep impression on me. At the inquest I heard Mr. Carlton give his evidence, and from that moment I believed him to have been guilty. He swore before the coroner that he neither touched nor saw the draught after he gave it back to Mrs. Pepperfly; that he did not observe or know where she placed it. That I knew to be a falsehood. He did see it and touch it, and took care to replace it in the same position which the old woman had done. He testified that he had told Mrs. Crane not to take the draught, but I felt sure he had told her nothing of the sort. He swore also that he knew nothing of Mrs. Crane, who she was, or where she came from, and that I knew was false. An impulse came upon me to step out before the coroner and declare all I had seen and heard, but somehow I did not dare; I feared he might turn round, and set me at defiance by denying it, or even accuse me in his stead—and which of us would have been listened to?—an established gentleman, such as he; or me, an obscure servant? Part of a letter was found before the inquest, was over—and, my lady, it was a faithful copy, for I remember every word, of the first part of that letter found last night by Lady Laura. The coroner showed it to Mr. Carlton, and he fenced in his answers; he took the letter to the window, and stood there with his back to the room; the jury thought nothing, but I was sure it was only to collect himself, and gain time to cover his agitation. That letter, which Lady Laura found, was the one written by Mrs. Crane the night of her arrival, for I recognised the envelope again last night; the very letter which Mrs. Gould