"Are ye giving a ball while the mistress of the house is from home?" she inquired, gayly; and, as the queerness of our actions struck her: "What is it?" she cried; and again, "What is it?"
To save her, some power of thought came back to my disordered mind.
"Come away, Nancy! Come away with me!" I cried; but before I could reach her she had moved forward toward the dead, her head lowered, her eyes widened with terror, and at sight of the blood clapped her hands over her eyes to shut out the horrid sight, and went white, and but for me would have fallen.
The telling of this takes longer than the acting of it, for it was less than a minute before she called, with some authority in her tone:
"Send them away, Jock. Send them all away! Leave me alone with him."
I motioned the men from the room. It was the common belief that his grace was Nancy's accepted lover, and there seemed nothing strange in her request to be alone with him. As I came back she held me by the sleeve.
"Have you found anything——" she began. "Do you know of anybody?"
"Nothing has been found," I answered, and a look passed between us which told me that my dread was her own.
"Jock, darling," she went on, "stay here! but don't see anything you may have to tell of afterward," and a vision of the hatless man in the snow came back to me at her words.
"Fetch me some water," she went on, "and let none come in but you."