“Oh, Barnabas, it’s dreadful! Is he really dead?”
But she wanted no answer. She put her hands before her face, reproaching herself for having disliked the man, almost feeling that she had had a share in his tragic death.
“Who did it?” she asked at last, very suddenly.
Now Barnabas meant most strongly that the girl should not have the least suspicion that her father had a hand in this affair. The farmer’s soft heart had been touched as soon as Captain Mulgrave betrayed, by a momentary breaking of the voice, that he was not so utterly indifferent to his daughter as he wished to appear. Upon that reassuring sign of human feeling, Barnabas instantly resolved to hold his tongue for ever as to what he had seen. But unluckily, his powers of imagination and dissimulation were not great. Feminine wits saw through him, as they had done many a time before. While he was slowly preparing an elaborate answer, Freda had jumped at once to the very conclusion he wished her to avoid.
“Who did it?” she repeated in tones so suddenly tremulous and passionate that they betrayed her thought even to the somewhat slow-witted Yorkshireman.
“Lord have mercy on t’ lass!” cried he below his breath. “But Ah believe she knows.”
“Do you mean to say,” she went on in a low, monotonous voice, “that you saw my father—kill him?”
Her voice dropped on the last words so that Barnabas could only guess them.
“Noa, lass, noa,” said he quickly, “Ah didn’t see him do it.”
“Then he didn’t do it!” cried she, with a sudden change to a high key, and in tones of triumphant conviction. “You can tell me all about it now, for I’m quite satisfied.”