“Get ready as quickly as you can, Mary,” she said to me when the paroxysm had somewhat subsided. “We go up to town by the 9.10.”
“Is his lordship coming with us, my lady?” I asked.
“Oh, yes!” she said, whilst a bright smile lit up her face. “Father is simply grand … and yet he knows.”
“Knows what, my lady?” I queried instinctively, for Lady Molly had paused, and I saw a look of acute pain once more darken her soft, grey eyes.
“My father knows,” she said, slowly and almost tonelessly, “that half an hour ago the police found a weighted stick in the Elkhorn Woods not far from the spot where Mr. Steadman was murdered. The stick has the appearance of having been very vigorously cleaned and scraped recently, in spite of which fact tiny traces of blood are still visible on the leaden knob. The inspector showed my father that stick. I saw it too. It is the property of Captain Hubert de Mazareen, and by to-morrow, at the latest, it will be identified as such.”
There was silence in the little boudoir now: a silence broken only by the sound of dull sobs which rose from my dear lady’s overburdened heart. Lady Molly at this moment had looked into the future, and with that unerring intuition which has since been of such immense service to her she had already perceived the grim web which Fate was weaving round the destiny of the man she loved.
I said nothing. What could I say? I waited for her to speak again.
The first words she uttered after the terrible pronouncement which she had just made were:
“I’ll wear my white cloth gown to-morrow, Mary. It is the most becoming frock I have, and I want to look my best on my wedding-day.”