"I do not believe it," cried the lady, with a disdainful lift of the head, though all the color had faded from her face. "No person on earth could make me believe it."
Storms allowed this outburst to pass by him, quietly, while he stood before the lady, hat in hand.
Then he spoke:
"Lady, it was this that caused the murder. The young master was in the cottage, as he had been many a time before that night, but this time Jessup was away in London. I was going there myself; saw him and her through the window, and turned back, not caring to go in, while he was there, though I thought no great harm of it—"
"There was no harm. I will stake my word, my life, my very soul; there was no harm in it," cried Lady Rose. "If an honorable man lives, it is Walton Hurst."
"It may be, lady. I do not dispute it. But perhaps old Jessup thought otherwise. I do not know. There must have been hard words when he came in and found those two in company, for in a few minutes the young gentleman came dashing through the porch with a gun in his hand. He may have been out shooting and stopped at the cottage on his way home. I cannot tell that; but he came out with a gun in his hand; then Jessup followed, muttering to himself, and overtook the young master just as he got under the shadow of the great cedar of Lebanon. Some hot words passed there. I could not hear them distinctly, for they were muffled with rage; but I came up just in time to see Walton Hurst level his gun and fire. Then Jessup leaped out from the shadows, wrenched the gun from the hand that had fired it, and, turning it like a club, knocked Hurst down with it. This was done in the moonlight. I saw it all. Then Jessup dropped the gun, staggered backward into the darkness of the cedar, and fell. They were found so—one lying in the blackness cast down by the cedar branches, the other with his face to the sky, as he had been thrown across the path where the moonlight shone."
"Ah, yes, I remember—I remember," moaned Lady Rose. "He looked so white and cold; we thought he was dead."
"She was there. She went to the young man first. I marked that. Her father lay in the shadows bleeding to death, but she went to the young man first."
"She did. I remember it," flashed through the brain of Lady Rose. But she said, bravely, "It was nothing. He lay in the light, and she saw him first. It was natural."
"I thought so afterward. She was my sweetheart, lady, and I was glad to believe it," answered Storms, who had no wish to excite the lady's jealousy beyond a certain point; "but after that, she grew cold to me. How could I help thinking it was because his kindness had turned her head a little?"