“You are witness all,” said my Lord Sanquhar, “that this was in self-defence.”
The woman cast a backward glance into the room. Her rich bloom had faded. She was white, but with a palpitating whiteness as of fire at its intensest, and the gaze of her great eyes was as fire too. Almost red they shone, repeating the blood fires of the rubies. Then she gave herself to Lord Sanquhar’s embrace, and together they rushed out into the night.
“Odds my life!” said Mr. Bellairs, looking up at Sir Everard. He had flung himself on one knee beside the stricken man, and was going through the vain parade of seeking for a pulse which he knew no longer beat. “Did you see that, sir?”
“He lifted her across her husband’s very body! He lifted her right across the body?” said Sir Everard, in a hushed voice of disgust.
“Lifted her? Sir, she jumped!”
Pamela kept the child’s face turned against her breast with a loving hand, and as she rocked and soothed, she herself wept as if her heart would break.
Through the doors, cast open to the night, the roar of a new snow wind hurtled in upon them. There followed a sudden clamour of voices, as the host endeavoured to arrest my lord’s departure and was borne down, well-nigh annihilated, from his path; the crackling shout of my lord’s orders; the plunge and clatter of hoofs on the cobbles. It seemed as if the blood-guilty pair had gone on the wings of the storm, and that the very elements cried after them as they went.
Sir Everard, as the most responsible witness, assisted the landlord in the preliminary investigation of magistrate and constable. He took a certain grim pleasure in furnishing Lord Sanquhar’s name, and trusted the nobleman might be summoned to answer for his action. Even if acquittal were a foregone conclusion, to a reputation already tarnished this incident was not likely to add a lustre. By the quality of the murdered man’s clothes, the massive gold of his watch-chain, the signet ring on his dead hand, it was judged that he was a merchant of the better class, and that the unfortunate incident would probably make some stir among his compatriots.
The cold and stiffening body which had been so short a while before pulsing with agony and passion, was laid in the harness-room of the inn, covered with a white sheet. Scarce ten yards away the grey horse that had borne its rider on the wild race to death was placidly munching its corn, the sweat not yet dry on its flanks.