"Oh poor Edwy!" said Agatha. "Something is troubling him. Let us go back."
"He has been growing much worse of late," said Dillwyn, studying the unfortunate idiot attentively. "His mother's death seems to have preyed upon him a good deal. Poor boy! I suppose she was his sole comfort. He has grown more violent and unreasonable, and the form his increasing mania has taken is a hatred of his father. Every one is remarking that. He cannot see him without going into a frightful state of excitement."
"What is it, my poor fellow?" said Dillwyn gently, who always spoke to him as though he could hear.
He tried to release his hand from Agatha's arm. There was a difficulty about doing this, the idiot being strong; but Dillwyn had a strange influence over him. He made a slight gesture, and at once the boy turned to him, letting Agatha go.
"Sho! Sho!" he growled in his unnatural voice—a voice full of living anguish, however—pointing through the hole in the rhododendrons.
Dillwyn and Agatha followed his gaze, and saw Darkham far away over there, talking to Mrs. Greatorex, who had evidently come down to the courts.
The idiot pointed again to his father, and lifted his hands and shook them violently. There was horror and an awful hatred in his wild black eyes that were so like Darkham's.
"Sho! Sho!" shouted Edwy again, not knowing that he shouted; and then he turned to Agatha, staring at her, as if to compel her attention, and pointed again to his father, and suddenly drew a handkerchief from his pocket.
He folded it, clumsily, it is true, and then, with a weird movement, laid it across his mouth and nostrils, and pressed his hands upon it. With all his might he pressed.
She grew deadly pale. Had he—had that man murdered his wife? Oh no! Oh no! It was impossible.