Elsie Williams’ instant of vision fled from her as suddenly as it had come, and left her agonisedly and wildly rebellious, bewildered at the vortex of terror and shame and misery into which it seemed to her that she had suddenly, without volition of her own, been flung.
She could not trace the imperceptibly-graduated stages that had brought her to the pass where catastrophe became inevitable. To her, it seemed that she had swiftly been hurled from security into deadly peril by some agency as irresistible as it was malignant.
Every now and then realisation came to her, when certain frightful words sprang into frightful meaning, as they had never done before.
“Murder....”
“Conspiracy ... and incitement to murder....”
“Principal in the second degree....” The police officials had made use of that expression—so had Mr. Cleaver.
Elsie’s mother had fetched Mr. Cleaver, and had wildly repeated, in front of Elsie and the lawyer, that she would grudge no expense, not if it cost her her last penny.
“And the aunties will help, Elsie, they’ve been ever so good—anything we can get together, says your Aunt Gertie, and her face the colour of the tablecloth. Mr. Cleaver here will tell us the best man, if it—if it comes to—to....”
“You could scarcely do better than Sir Cambourne Trevor, Mrs. Palmer, but his fee, I ought to warn you, is a thousand guineas.”
“A thousand guineas!” Elsie and Mrs. Palmer had screamed together.