“Will Your Ladyship not sit down? Let me offer you some refreshment.”
“No, no, I want nothing!” Lady Roysdon answered, “and I would not have dared to disturb you, my Lord, if I had not been begged to do so by someone who knows that you can be trusted.”
“Trusted?” Lord Marshall echoed with an incredulous note in his voice. “I cannot, I am afraid, comprehend your Ladyship’s meaning.”
Lady Roysdon looked over her shoulder as if she thought that they might be overheard.
Then she said in a whisper,
“I believe, my Lord, you have a prisoner here in your house.”
“How are you aware of that?”
“It is true?”
“Yes, it is true. A man was brought here in the middle of the night who is, I understand, a notorious highwayman who has been terrorising the countryside for a long time.”
“Is that what y
