Have you any conception, any suspicion, let us say, where they have gone to ?" "La, sir, sure your honor ought to know that better than me." "How so, my pretty girl?
How should I know it?
She told me nothing about it." "Why, wasn't it your honor and Tom Gillespie that took her away in the carriage on that very night ?" Here now was wit against wit, or at least cunning against cunning.
Nancy, the adroit, hazarded an assertion of which she was not certain, in order to probe the baronet, and place him in a position by which she might be able by his conduct and manner to satisfy herself whether her suspicions were well-founded or not.
"But how do you know, my good girl, that I and Gillespie were out that night ?" It is unnecessary to repeat here circumstances with which the reader is already acquainted.

Nancy gave him the history of Mrs.Morgan's sudden illness, and all the other facts already mentioned.
"But there is one thing that I still cannot understand," replied the baronet, "which is, that the disappearance of Miss Gourlay was never mentioned to me until I inquired for her maid, whom I wished to speak with." "But sure that's very natural, sir," replied Nancy; "the reason we didn't speak to you upon the subject was because we thought that it was your honor who brought her away; and that as you took such a late hour in the night for it, you didn't wish that we should know anything about it." The baronet's eye fell upon her severely, as if he doubted the truth of what she said.

Nancy's eye, however, neither avoided his nor quailed before it.

She now spoke the truth, and she did so, in order to prevent herself and the other servants from incurring his resentment by their silence.
"Very well," observed Sir Thomas, calmly, but sternly.

"I think you have spoken what you believe to be the truth, and what, for all you know, may be the truth.