Dorothy’s lips moved, but they were too dry to form even the single word of assent, and it was Isabel who answered:
“Indeed it is; it’s too awful to realize. But we all ought to be so thankful that Will was cleared so quickly and so easily.”
Dorothy drew herself up and stared at her sister as if she doubted that she had heard aright. Was it so easy, then, to choose between one’s lover and one’s brother?
“But, sister, is it any less terrible for that?” she cried out reproachfully.
“Oh, no; I suppose not. It is too awful to think about, anyway. But it is just what one would expect of Mr. Brant—the giving himself up, I mean. I wonder if what the paper says about him is true—about his double identity.”
“How can you think of that now!” Dorothy burst out passionately. “Of course it isn’t true; and even if it were—” She stopped short and caught her breath in a quick gasp, suddenly remembering Brant’s parable.
“I am afraid it is true,” said Kate sorrowfully. “He is an old friend of Ned’s, and Ned would never tell me how he came to meet him in Silverette, or what Mr. Brant was doing there.”
Dorothy’s heart was too full for any kind of utterance. The open disgrace brought upon the family by her brother; the terrible tragedy for which she felt that her letters to Brant were partly responsible; the dreadful fate that awaited the slayer of James Harding, and Isabel’s apparent indifference thereto—these were all past speech. And when there came a dim suspicion of a more horrible thing—a bare suggestion that Brant had shielded the real murderer by giving himself up in his stead—she burst into tears and ran from the breakfast room.
In the meantime William Langford was having an exceedingly painful quarter of an hour in the library. Much to her dissatisfaction, Mrs. Langford had not been permitted to accompany her son in the capacity of special pleader, and for once in his life the young man was compelled to face his father’s wrath unsupported, while his mother awaited the outcome with what fortitude she could summon in the deserted drawing-room.
“Tell me the whole story, and tell me the truth,” was the judge’s stern command when his son appeared before him.