Her brain was whirling. She had forgotten for the moment that Clare had to be made happy; and some moments had passed before the sight of the bell-rope brought back her thoughts to the object which she had originally before her in going to it. She rang the bell, and when the butler appeared she had her voice sufficiently under control to ask him to tell her maid to find Miss Tristram and send her to the drawing-room.
As the butler was leaving the room she said—and now her voice was not quite so firm as it had been:
“I heard the postman telling some story to the gardener just now. Has some one been hurt?”
The man did not answer for a second or two, but that space was sufficient to send her thoughts wandering once more on a different track.
“Merciful Heaven!” she cried. “It cannot be possible that it is Mr. Westwood who was shot, as his brother was—within his own grounds?”
“Oh no, ma'am, it's not so bad as that,” replied the butler. “So far as I hear, it was the poachers that have been about Westwood Court one night and the Abbey Woods another night for the past month. It seems that Ralph Dangan, Sir Percival Hope's new keeper—-him that was at the Court for so long—he came upon them suddenly last night and they shot him. The story is that the poor man was not likely to live longer than a few hours.” Agnes gave a sigh—she wondered if the butler would know that it was a sigh of relief rather than one of sympathy for the unhappy man who had been shot.
“Poor fellow!” she said. “I hope his daughter has been sent for.”
“I didn't hear anything in that way, ma'am,” said the butler. “If she went to Sir Percival's sister, he will know her address, but they say that poor Dangan always refused to see her, though she was a good daughter except for her one slip.”
He left the room, and Agnes sat wondering how it was that she had been led to feel with such certainty that the story of the man who was shot referred to Sir Percival. And in its turn this question of hers became a terror to her, for in her condition of excitement she had lost all capacity to judge of incidents in an unprejudiced way. The condition of her brain caused her to distort every matter which she tried to consider on its merits.
She waited so long without any one appearing that she had actually forgotten what was the object of her waiting, and she was surprised when her maid came into the room saying: