I sank down upon the floor beside her, and she put her thin wasted arms round my neck and kissed me without a word. And the three men quietly left the room. We did not say much even then.
“Oh, Mrs. Rayner,” I whispered, “it is terrible for you!”
“Not so terrible to me,” she whispered back wearily. “I have known it for years—almost ever since I married him. But don’t talk about it any more,” said she, glancing furtively round the room. “He may be in the house at this moment; and they might search and watch for months, but they would never catch him. But he will make us suffer—me—ah, and you too now! You were so unsuspicious, yet it must have been you who set Laurence Reade upon the track.”
“Not of Mr. Rayner. Oh, I never thought of such a thing!” I whispered, shuddering.
And I told her all about my suspicions of Tom Parkes, my visit to the Hall, my letter to Laurence, and all I said in it.
“Mr. Reade has shown energy and courage,” said she. “But he will suffer for it too. You don’t know that man yet. He will never let Laurence marry you. Even if he were in prison, he would manage to prevent it.”
Luckily Laurence himself tapped at the door at that moment, for Mrs. Rayner’s gloomy forebodings were fast increasing the fever of my overwrought mind. He came to say that the constables had returned to the house, having failed in the fog to find any traces of Gordon, or of—of any of the others. He was going to return with them to the Hall, where they would sleep, leaving Maynard to pass the night at the Alders, as his missing host had invited him to do, and a couple of constables to keep watch in turn, though there was nothing less likely than that the—the persons they were in search of would return to the Alders that night. Then he said very gently to poor Mrs. Rayner—
“Will you forgive me for what I have done in all innocence? I had some vague suspicions, the reasons for which I will explain to you presently; but indeed I never thought to bring such a blow as this upon you.”
“It is no blow to me,” said she, raising her sad eyes to his face. “That man—my husband—would have got rid of me long ago, but that he hated violence and dreaded it. Everything short of that he has tried,” she whispered; “and it is not my fault that my wretched life has lingered on in spite of him.”
Laurence ground his teeth.