“How you loved him!” Agnes heard her say in a low voice.
“Loved him—loved him!” said Claude Westwood. He gave a little laugh as he took a step or two away from the picture. “Loved him! I love him so dearly that”—
Agnes looked with eager eyes across the room. She waited for Clare to say a word of pity for the man whose life had been spared, who had been given time to repent of his dreadful deed, but that word remained unspoken.
For the second time that evening a shiver went through Agnes. Sir Percival watched her as she watched the others across the room. There was a long interval of silence before Claude began to talk to the girl In a low voice, and shortly afterwards went with her through the portière that divided the two drawing-rooms.
“I want Clare to see the picture of Dick and myself taken when he was ten and I was eight—you know it, Agnes,” he said, as he followed Clare. The next minute the sound of his voice and Clare's came from the other room.
Sir Percival had been examining the case containing the poisoned arrows which lay on a table; but now he stood before Agnes.
“You have seen it,” he said. “I know that you have seen it as well as I. Is it too late to send her away?”
Agnes started.
“It cannot be possible that you, too, know it,” she said. “Oh no; you cannot have become acquainted with that horrible thing.”
“I must confess that I never suspected it before this evening,” said he. “But what I have seen here has been enough to tell me all that there is to be told.”