“For me, for me, yes, and for you! O, Frank!——” she could not keep them back; they came irresistibly, and rolled down her cheeks—“you don’t know what you have done, what you have lifted from my heart! And I said you were not a man—like him. O, forgive me, Frank dear!”
“Hush!” he said. He took her arm and tucked it close and comfortable under his, and led her on. “I am not, if it comes to that,” he said.
“You don’t mean that unkindly? No, you never would, of course. But I can be glad to think it now—glad that you are not. He is not good, Frank. I should hate him for what he has done—I can say it to you now—if he were not suffering so dreadfully for what he has not done.”
“I know, Audrey. Poor fellow—for what he has not done. That is the point. How are we going to p-prove it? I have been pushing some private inquiries, for my part, about that mysterious figure seen or not seen by Henstridge on the hill. I can’t get it out of my head that there really was such a figure, and that, if we could only t-trace it, we should hold the clue to the riddle.”
“Have you been doing that, Frank? And I thought you had forsaken us like the rest.”
“That was ungenerous of you, Audrey, dear. I should have come and told you, only I was delicate of starting you, perhaps, on a false scent, and thought it better to w-wait till I had something definite to offer.”
“Frank, did you read of the Inquest?”
“I was present at it—in the background.”
“O! Do you remember the master of the poor man who was supposed then——”
“Le Sage? I should think I do. His b-benevolent truthfulness was a thing to wonder over.”