I had to let him go. Any further obstruction from me, and I knew that his temper would have gone to pieces. I gave his message to Orsden, and we two continued the shoot without him. But it was a joyless business, and we were not very long in making an end of it. We parted in the road—Orsden for the Bit and Halter and the turning to Leighway, and I for the gates of Wildshott. It was near five o’clock, and a grey still evening. As I passed the stables, a white-faced groom came hurrying to stop me with a piece of staggering news. One of the maids, he said, had been found murdered, shot dead, that afternoon in the Bishop’s Walk.
CHAPTER VI.
“THAT THUNDERS IN THE INDEX”
Le Sage, in the course of a pleasant little drive with Audrey, asked innumerable questions and answered none. This idiosyncrasy of his greatly amused the young lady, who was by disposition frankly outspoken, and whose habit it never was to consider in conversation whether she committed herself or any one else. Truth with her was at least a state of nature—though it might sometimes have worn with greater credit to itself a little more trimming—and states of nature are relatively pardonable in the young. A child who sees no indecorum in nakedness can hardly be expected to clothe Truth.
“This Sir Francis,” asked the Baron, “he is an old friend of yours?”
“O, yes!” said Audrey; “quite an old friend.”
“And favourite?”
“Well, he seems one of us, you see. Don’t you like him yourself?”
“I suppose he and your brother are on intimate terms?”
“We are all on intimate terms; Hugh and Frank no more than Frank and I.”
“And no less, perhaps; or perhaps not quite so much?”