"I know he was. He was afraid lest Carew should find him out and kill him. He lived in a state of perpetual dread, for he told me so on the night I saw him."
"Why did you go to the Red House at so late an hour?" asked Dora.
"Dargill sent me a note stating that he wanted to see me. I went; what could I do? He might have told Sir John about my past. Oh yes, I went; and Dargill told me that Pallant had been at him for a parcel of letters--an old correspondence between Dargill and myself. Pallant wanted to get them to increase his hold over me and wring money out of me. But Dargill, coward as he was, acted very well. He gave me the letters himself; that was why he sent for me. I went, I got the letters, and I came away. When I left the house Dargill--or Edermont, as he called himself--was as well as you or I."
"But when Allen went into the study after you left it, he found Mr. Edermont dead, and the bureau robbed."
"Then, if Dr. Scott did not kill him, someone else must have done so."
"But Allen had no reason to kill him," argued Dora.
"No," said Lady Burville, "but Carew had."
"My father?"
"Yes; I believe that my first husband killed my second. In a word, George Carew killed Mr. Dargill."