The Astonishing Adventure of Jane SmithWentworth, Patricia
General
The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith
Wentworth, Patricia
Adventure stories; Cousins -- Fiction; Detective and mystery stories
The little glow which presently relieved the blackness cheered her
unreasonably. It was a danger signal and she knew it, but it cheered
her.
“One would rather be doing something dangerous than just mouldering in
the pitch dark,” she told herself, and edged slowly nearer and nearer to
the light.
She was now at the corner, and could look round it and through the steel
bars into part of the laboratory. The disadvantage of her position was
that she might be taken in the rear by any one who came along either the
passage that she herself had come up or the slanting passage with the
well in it which ran into the other at an acute angle, about six feet
from where she was standing.
Jane, however, knew of no one who was at all likely to arrive except
Henry. She therefore did not trouble about her rear, but looked with all
her eyes into the laboratory. She saw Lady Heritage sitting in a tall
chair, a little turned away. Her right elbow rested on one arm, and her
chin was in her hand. Her eyes were downcast. She was speaking in a
cold, gentle voice:
“I have not many friends—I thought you were my friend. Was it all lies,
Jeffrey?”
Mr. Ember came into view for a moment. He must have been at the far end
of the room. He came down it now, walked past Lady Heritage, and turned
to face her. Jane saw his profile. He was smiling faintly.
“I am not fond of lies,” he said; “they are very entangling—so hard to
keep one’s head and remember what one has said. Now the truth is so
simple and easy; besides, you may believe it or not, I really do dislike
lying to you. I have always told you the truth where it was humanly
possible to do so. Even in the matter of Miss Molloy——”
Lady Heritage exclaimed suddenly and sharply, lifting her chin from her
hand and throwing her head back:
“Renata Molloy! She’s in this wretched conspiracy of yours, I suppose?”
Ember laughed.
“No,” he said.
“Then what is she?”
“I wish I knew,” said Ember, speaking soberly enough.
“But what you told me wasn’t true?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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