"I don't understand you; I have not seen it. Lizzie, did you see anything in the passage when you came down to me last night?"
"No," replied Lizzie, who had listened to the conversation with intense curiosity.
Ned Chester considered in silence, uncertain for a moment how to act. The cigar-case, which had been a gift to his master, Arthur Temple, bore on it an inscription which might betray him, and he thought it not unlikely that Mrs. Lenoir intended to retain it, so that she might compel the fulfilment of his promise. There were obvious reasons why he could not run the risk of making the theft public, for he entertained no doubt that Mrs. Lenoir had robbed him. Since the previous night he had had reason to suspect that his position was growing perilous. His young master's manner had suddenly changed towards him, and he had almost determined not to return to Mr. Temple's house. With this partially-formed resolve in view, he had seen the Duchess a short time before his visit to Mrs. Lenoir, and proposed flight to her. He had taken good care of himself with respect to money, and he had about him between five and six hundred pounds. His scheme was to go to Paris with the Duchess, and thence to America, where he would be safe, and where he believed his peculiar talents might prove of service to him. At all events, with ready money at his command, a few months of enjoyment were before him, and that prospect was sufficiently alluring. But he had found the Duchess strangely reluctant to agree to the flight, and he had to use all the blandishments at his command to prevail upon her. At length she had yielded, on one condition. She would not accompany him alone, nor would she go without the society of one of her own sex. An instinct of affection for Sally had stolen into the Duchess's breast on her lover's sudden and startling proposition, and she suggested that Sally should accompany her in her flight. To this he gave a vehement refusal, and the Duchess fell back on another expedient. In his boastful moments he had told her that he had confided to some of his lady relations the secret of his attachment to a poor girl, and that, charmed with "the romance of the thing," they had promised to assist in reconciling him with his father, should any discovery take place. The Duchess, to his annoyance, remembered this, as she remembered every word he had spoken with reference to himself and his fine friends; and she stipulated that, as he objected to Sally, one of these ladies should accompany her. Seeing no way to the accomplishment of this end, he had argued with her and endeavoured to talk away her resolution. But the more he argued, the more obstinate the Duchess had become, and he was compelled to promise that her whim should be complied with.