"Of course, I don't want to hurt you," said Edith.
"And, therefore, it feels as though you loved me. Of course it does. Your hand says one thing and your voice another. Which way does your heart go?"
"Right against you," said Edith. But she could not help blushing at the lie as she told it. "My conscience is altogether against you, and I advise you to attend more to that than to anything else." But still he held her hand, and still she let him hold it.
At that moment Hunter appeared upon the scene, and Edith regained her hand. But had the Captain held the hand, Hunter would not have seen it. Hunter was full of his own news; and, as he told it, very dreadful the story was. "There has been a murder worse than any that have happened yet, just the other side of the lake," and he pointed away to the mountains, and to that part of Lough Corrib which is just above Cong.
"Another murder?" said Edith.
"Oh, miss, no other murder ever told of had any horror in it equal to this! I don't know how the governor will keep himself quiet there, with such an affair as this to be looked after. There are six of them down,—or at any rate five."
"When a doubt creeps in, one can always disbelieve as much as one pleases."
"You can hardly disbelieve this, sir, as I have just heard the story from Sergeant Malcolm. There were six in the house, and five have been carried out dead. One has been taken to Cong, and he is as good as dead. Their names are Kelly. An old man and an old woman, and another woman and three children. The old woman was very old, and the man appears to have been her son."
"Have they got nobody?" asked Clayton.
"It appears not, sir. But there is a rumour about the place that there were many of them in it."