Лучшие романы Уилки Коллинза / The Best of Wilkie Collins

All I can ask you to do is to put off her departure, if possible, till later in the day. I must go to Frizinghall myself to-morrow morning – and I shall be back by two o’clock, if not before. If Miss Verinder can be kept here till that time, I should wish to say two words to her – unexpectedly – before she goes.”

My lady directed me to give the coachman her orders, that the carriage was not to come for Miss Rachel until two o’clock. “Have you more to say?” she asked of the Sergeant, when this had been done.

“Only one thing, your ladyship. If Miss Verinder is surprised at this change in the arrangements, please not to mention Me as being the cause of putting off her journey.”

My mistress lifted her head suddenly from her book as if she was going to say something – checked herself by a great effort – and, looking back again at the open page, dismissed us with a sign of her hand.

“That’s a wonderful woman,” said Sergeant Cuff, when we were out in the hall again.

At those words, the truth rushed at last into my stupid old head. For the moment, I suppose I must have gone clean out of my senses. I seized the Sergeant by the collar of his coat, and pinned him against the wall.

“Damn you!” I cried out, “there’s something wrong about Miss Rachel – and you have been hiding it from me all this time!”

Sergeant Cuff looked up at me – flat against the wall – without stirring a hand, or moving a muscle of his melancholy face.

“Ah,” he said, “you’ve guessed it at last.”

My hand dropped from his collar, and my head sunk on my breast. Please to remember, as some excuse for my breaking out as I did, that I had served the family for fifty years. Miss Rachel had climbed upon my knees, and pulled my whiskers, many and many a time when she was a child. Miss Rachel, with all her faults, had been, to my mind, the dearest and prettiest and best young mistress that ever an old servant waited on, and loved.

“Don’t distress yourself, Mr. Betteredge,” says the Sergeant, with more kindness than I had any right to expect from him. “In my line of life if we were quick at taking offence, we shouldn’t be worth salt to our porridge.