Walter stepped back again into the wood, and Rupert said:
“You don't know what you have done, father.”
“You are mad, mad,” the general gasped.
His face was very pale, and he trembled a little, for though he had heard many bullets whistle by his ears, that had happened in action against an enemy, and was altogether different from this. He put out his hand in an attempt to take the pistol that Rupert easily evaded.
“Give it to me,” he said. “I saved his life; you might have killed him.”
“Yes, you saved him, father,” Rupert muttered, thinking to himself that the saving of Walter's life might well mean the loss of Ella's, since very likely the failure of their plots would be at once attributed by the conspirators to her. “Father, I never wrote that letter you say you had. Walter forged it to get you here, where he meant to kill us both. That's why he looked like that, that's why he had his gun.”
General Dunsmore only stared blankly at him for a moment.
“Kill me? Kill you? What for?” he gasped.
“So that he might become Lord Chobham of Wreste Abbey instead of Lord Chobham's poor relation,” answered Rupert. “The poison attempt on uncle which Walter discovered was first of all his own doing; it was through him Charley Wright lost his life. He has committed at least one other murder. Today he meant to kill both of us. Then he would have been heir to the title and estates, and when uncle died he would have been Lord Chobham.”
“Nonsense, absurd, impossible. You're mad, quite mad,” the general stammered. “Why, he would have been hanged at once.”