"Since that is so," he said, "I ask you, before I go, to hear the rest of my story—indeed, I must tell it you. Then I shall have done all I can. Oh, it will not take long," he added, with a sudden inexpressible bitterness. "In half an hour I shall be gone!"
Harry sprung up as if he had been stung.
"I do not deserve that from you, Geoff," he said. "Do you think I want to get rid of you? Do you think it is fine fun for me to tell you to go? I am not conscious of any great pleasure in it."
"No, I am sorry," said Geoffrey. "I had no business to say that or to think that. But—O Harry, before I go, for the dear Lord's sake, hear me! I have not been speaking idly. Do you think, in turn, that it is fine fun for me to get up and bring these awful accusations against Mr. Francis?"
"Of course I don't. But the whole thing I have to put on one side for the present. Uncle Francis will not stop in the house while you are here, Geoff, and I can not let him go, whatever the truth may be, while he is like this. I dreaded every moment that a seizure might come on him again. Besides, he is an old man; he is my uncle. For the present, then, I am like this: I neither believe what you have told me nor do I disbelieve it; I put it aside; though, before long, when my uncle is recovered, I shall have to do the one or the other. Either I shall believe, be convinced you are right, and then God knows what I shall do, or I shall think your accusations wild and incredible, and, I warn you, too infinitely base for words. And then, too," he added, suddenly, "God knows what I shall do! But at present, as I tell you, there is no question of that. My certain and immediate duty is to look after Uncle Francis."
"I ask you then, before I go," said Geoffrey, "to hear the remainder of what I have to say."
"Certainly; but whatever you tell me, I shall not attempt to judge of it now. You had just spoken about the confusion which came in somewhere between the ice house and the summerhouse."
So Geoffrey told him of the loop of cotton he had found round the post of the gun rack; of Mr. Francis's visit to the gun room, and finally of his own finding him in the afternoon, after the breaking of the sluice, sitting before the fire in the hall "supposing" that Harry had not yet come in. And Harry heard in silence and without comment.
"That is all?" he asked, when Geoffrey had finished. "You are sure there is nothing more? You are sure, also, you have been exact throughout?"
"That is all," said Geoffrey, "and I have been exact."