“What a miserable, matter-of-fact place the world would be if it were forbidden to exercise one’s imagination a little!”
“It would be safer, anyhow,” he replied; and as Lady Gwendolyn’s fly drove up at this moment, he opened the door and handed her in, a little surprised that she made no further objection to his plan.
Lady Teignmouth parted from them with a jest, followed by a laugh that sounded forced and unnatural at the moment, but struck him as strangely incongruous when, on looking back, he saw her standing still where they had left her, with such a haggard, troubled face, and intense eyes, that he shuddered, and wondered if a woman with that countenance could have an ordinary destiny.
“Well,” she observed at last, “I thought you wished to speak to me.”
He came back to himself with a start.
“So I did. It is necessary for your personal safety that you should know the truth at once. The gentleman whom you met in the wood last evening died two hours ago. He told me, with almost his last breath, that he had been poisoned, and sent you a message of forgiveness. All this will never transpire, of course, however wrong it may be of me to conceal the truth; but, unfortunately, there is likely to be a post-mortem examination, and in that case everything may come out. Are you prepared to face it?”
“What do you mean? Are you mad?” she exclaimed, with a look of apprehension that was really splendid acting. “You cannot wonder that I doubt your sanity, since a few hours ago you were pretending to love me, and now you actually dare to accuse me of a horrible crime.”
“Look here, Lady Gwendolyn,” he said hoarsely; “my love was no pretense, and you know it; my accusation is no falsehood, and you know that, too. I witnessed your first meeting with the wretched man who is dead. I know that you were together again last night, for I was in the wood at about nine o’clock, and I heard him address you in terms of reproach. Of course I witnessed nothing that passed after this, for I hurried away as fast as I could; but at three o’clock the poor creature, who had evidently tried to crawl to the inn for aid, died at the roadside, with his head on my arm; his last words being: ‘Tell her I forgive her, and——’ Perhaps you can fill up the hiatus. I pretend to understand nothing that I did not see and hear.”
She listened to him in stupefied silence, and when he had finished, she said, in a low, shrinking voice:
“Describe the man to me.”