And still he did not move.
"Frederick?"
Was it her voice that was thus murmuring his name? Can the tiger snarl one moment and fawn the next?
"Frederick, I have a final word to say—a last farewell. Up to this hour I have endured your attentions, or, let us say, accepted them, for I always found you handsome and agreeable, if not the master of my heart. But now it is love that I feel, love; and love with me is no fancy, but a passion—do you hear?—a passion which will make life a heaven or hell for the man who has inspired it. You should have thought of this when you opposed me."
And with a look in which love and hatred contended for mastery, she bent and imprinted a kiss upon his forehead. Next moment she was gone.
Or so he thought. But when, after an interval of nameless recoil, he rose and attempted to stagger from the place, he discovered that she had been detained in the hall by two or three men who had just come in by the front door.
"Is this Miss Page?" they were asking.
"Yes, I am Miss Page—Amabel Page" she replied with suave politeness. "If you have any business with me, state it quickly, for I am about to leave town."
"That is what we wish to prevent," declared a tall, thin young man who seemed to take the lead. "Till the inquest has been held over the remains of Mrs. Webb, Coroner Talbot wishes you to regard yourself as a possible witness."
"Me?" she cried, with an admirable gesture of surprise and a wide opening of her brown eyes that made her look like an astonished child. "What have I got to do with it?"