“Agnes.”
She addressed the cover and desired the butler to give it to Clare the moment she returned.
At last the sound of the broughem was heard on the drive. She entered the carriage after satisfying herself that Cyril's confession was in her pocket.
The butler at the Court said that Mr. Westwood was not at home at that moment; he thought that most likely he was gone to the cottage of Dangan, Sir Percival Hope's keeper, who, as perhaps Miss Mowbray had heard, had been shot during the night. Mr. Westwood had said, before leaving the Court, that he would be back for lunch, so perhaps Miss Mowbray would wait in the drawing-room for his coming. It was unlikely that he would be late.
Miss Mowbray said she would wait, and was shown into the drawing-room.
For a few minutes after seating herself she was calm; but then her brain began to whirl once more. The thought came to her that she was in the very room where Cyril and Dick had sat on that night before the horrible deed was done. She started up, thinking that perhaps she was sitting in the very chair in which her brother had sat looking in the face of the man whom he meant to kill.
She glanced at the portrait on the easel and seemed to see once again the form of Dick Westwood beside the window through which he had gone to his death.
“Why did he do it—why—oh, why?” she whispered. “You were always so good to him, Dick—you were always his friend when every one else shunned him. How could he do it?”
She had begun to pace the room wildly, but after some moments a curious doubt seemed to cross her mind. She took the letter out of her pocket and read it for the third time with beating heart, for the echo of that question of hers, “Why—why—why?” seemed to ring round the room. Surely she must have misread it.
She crushed it into her pocket once more.