Did she assist her mistress in some love intrigue?
What more probable?
And in that case the affair becomes even more complicated.

Not only must the woman be found but her lover also; for it is the lover who has moved in this affair.

He is, or I am greatly deceived, a man of noble birth.

A person of inferior rank would have simply hired an assassin.

This man has not hung back; he himself has struck the blow and by that means avoiding the indiscretion or the stupidity of an accomplice.