“But what is the use of an advertisement? O, Mr. Prior! what is the use of an advertisement when we know where he is, or ought to be, and can go——?”
“Do you really think he will be there? It was a blind. O, Miss Robin, it is evident now it was a blind to cover his tracks!”
“But why should he have designed to escape at all, leaving this—O, Mr. Prior!—leaving this horror behind him?”
“We can only conjecture—O, Miss Robin, we can only conjecture! Perhaps because of his conscience overtaking him; perhaps because, killing in haste, he discovered at leisure that it would not go into the kettle; perhaps in a phase of that deadly absence of mind, which, he will have realized by now, the Lord has converted to his confusion.”
“Well, if you are right. And in the meantime we must get rid of this—somehow. O, pray think of a means! Do! Do!”
Mrs. Gaunt steadied her storming breast as she leaned for support, with hanging head, against the door.
“There’s the old well—off the lane,” she panted, without looking up. “He there might have fallen in—as he went out—and none have guessed it to this day.”
It was a fearful inspiration. Mr. Prior, in that moment of supreme sentient exaltation, abandoned himself to the awful rapture of things.
“June!” he whispered, putting shaking hands on the girl’s shoulders; “if I do this thing for your sake, will you—will you—I have a mother—this is no longer a place for you—come to Clapton?”
“Yes,” she answered, offering to nestle to him. “I had supposed that was understood.”