"I must know, Maurice: I cannot bear to wait. Is he—is he—dead?"
He would gladly have refused to answer, but his pallid lips spoke for him. And from another group a shriek rang out from the lips of Rosalind Romaine—a shriek that told her all.
"Dead? Murdered? Oh, no, no—it cannot be?" cried Oliver's sister. "Not dead! not dead!"
She fell back in violent hysterics, but Ethel neither wept nor cried aloud. She stood erect, her head a little higher than usual, a smile that might almost be called proud curving her soft lips.
"You see," she said, unsteadily, but very clearly; "you see—it was not his fault. He would have come—if he had been—alive."
And, then, still smiling, she gave her hand to her brother and let him lead her away. But before she had crossed the threshold of the room, he was obliged to take her in his arms to save her from falling, and it was in his arms that she was carried back to the carriage which she had left so smilingly.
But for those who were left behind there was more bad news to hear. In London no secret can be kept even from the ears of those whose heart it breaks to hear it. Before noon the newsboys were crying in the streets—
"Brutal murder of a gentleman on his wedding-day. Arrest of a well-known journalist."
And everywhere the name bandied from pillar to post was that of Mr. Caspar Brooke, who had been arrested on suspicion of having caused the death of Oliver Trent.