"——if my aunt hadn't been in it somehow. Poor old Muggins was such a bone between them!"
"You don't suppose he'd ended by turning on her?"
"Hardly. He was like a kitten with her, poor brute!"
Another cigarette was lighted; more inhaling went on unchecked.
"Was Mrs. Dysone by herself out there—but for you?"
"Well—yes."
"Does that mean she wasn't?"
"Upon my word, I don't know!" said young Paley, frankly. "It sounds most awful rot, but just for a moment I thought I saw somebody in a sort of surplice affair. But I can only swear to Aunt Essie, and she was in her dressing-gown, and it wasn't white."
Dollar did not go to bed at all. He sat first at one window, watching the black trees turn blue, and eventually a variety of sunny greens; then at the other, staring down at the pretty scene of a deed ugly in itself, but uglier in the peculiar quality of its mystery.
A dog; only a dog, this time; but the woman's own dog! There were two new sods on the place where he supposed it had lain withering....