CHAPTER XXX.
IN DEFENSE OF CRIME.
“He will never forget her,” said Lady Hermione, slowly, as the door closed after the unhappy man. “Oh, Ronald, if there be such a thing as haunting, do you think she haunts him?”
But Sir Ronald was not so quick as usual with an answer to his wife’s question; he held little Clare in his arms so that the pallor of his face was hidden.
“I think,” he replied, slowly, “that the discovery has become a mania with him: he will know no rest nor peace until he has found out something that troubles him.”
“And do you think, really,” she continued, “that he will find any clue to it ever so small?”
“My darling, I cannot say. Do not talk of it, Hermione; my soul seems to shiver at the bare recollection of the horror of the time.”
“It was a cruel deed,” she said, thoughtfully, “a cruel, merciless deed. Clarice never hurt any one in her life. I cannot understand it. Do you know what I have often thought, Ronald?”
“No,” he said, reluctantly, as though unwilling to pursue the subject. “I do not.”
“My idea is, and always has been, that the crime was committed by some madman. I read something in the papers years ago about a strong and most violent lunatic, who had escaped from custody and could not be found. After that I remember reading of what seemed to me very purposeless crimes—a woman cruelly slaughtered, a boy slain without reason, an old man barbarously murdered for murder’s sake—and I could not help, in my own mind, wondering if the wretched lunatic had been guilty of all.”
“It may have been so,” replied Sir Ronald.