“Well, yes. What else did Mr. Cornthwaite say?” asked he.
“And that they quarrelled close to the railway line. And that she—she—’pon my soul, I can’t see how it’s possible—a little bit of a girl like that! He says she dragged Christian down, and flung him in front of a train that was coming along! Of course, we know that woman is an incomprehensible creature; but how one of only five feet high could throw down a young man of stoutish build like Christian is more than even I, with all my experience of the sex, can understand!”
Bram was frowning, deep in thought. Again he did not make any answer.
“That’s all I heard. Have you learnt any more particulars yourself, Elshaw?”
“I was there,” replied Bram simply.
This gave Mr. Biron a great shock. He began to shiver again, and subsided from the buoyant manner he had begun to assume into the terror-stricken attitude of a few minutes before. He turned to clutch the banisters to help him upstairs.
“Well,” said he in a complaining voice, as he began to drag himself up, “if she did it, that’s no reason why everybody should be down upon me! Meg Tyzack, too! A fury like that! What right has she to follow me, to persecute me?”
“The poor creature’s had her brain turned, I think, by—by the treatment she’s received,” said Bram.
“But I had no hand in the treatment! She has no right to visit Christian’s follies and vices upon me! Me! And yet, when I came out of the house at Holme Park, and I came upon her on her way up to it, she turned out of her way to go shrieking after me! There’s no reason in such behavior, even if she is off her head!”
“Well, there’s just this, Mr. Biron, that she knows you used to encourage Christian to come to your house, and to urge Claire to go and meet him,” said Bram sturdily, disgusted with the airs of martyrdom which the worst of fathers was assuming. “And there’s enough of a thread of reason in that, especially for one whose mind is not at its best.”