“Why, what’s the matter?” she said.
“I don’t know, miss; but there’s something wrong upstairs, and they’re sending for the police.”
Joan hurried to the room where Morgan was waiting for her. With the impeccable manner of the good manservant, and almost without a shade of feeling in his voice, Morgan told her what had happened—how he and Winter had found Prinsep lying on the floor of his study, dead.
“You are sure that he is dead,” she managed to ask. “Have you sent for a doctor?”
Morgan assured her that everything was being attended to, and said that he had come to her because some one would have to break the news to Sir Vernon. Would she do it?
Into Joan’s mind came the thought of the interview she had expected, and of the interview she was after all to have. No question now of her marrying John Prinsep—there was no longer any such person as John Prinsep to marry.
“I suppose I must do it,” she said.
Joan’s composure lasted just long enough for the door to close behind Morgan. Then she flung herself down on a couch, and let her feelings have their way. She sobbed half hysterically—not because, even at this tragic moment, she felt grief for John Prinsep, but simply because the sudden catastrophe was too much for her. Tragedy had swooped down in a moment on the house of Brooklyn, sweeping out of existence the crisis which had seemed so vital to her only a few minutes ago. On her was the sense of calamity, bewilderment, and helplessness in the face of death.
She had felt no call to ask Morgan questions. John Prinsep’s death—his murder—was a fact—a shattering event which must have time to sink into her consciousness before she could begin to inquire about the manner of its coming. She did not even ask herself how it had happened, or who had done this thing. As she lay sobbing, the one thought in her mind was that Prinsep was dead.
But soon that other thought, that call to action which had been presented to her at the very moment when Morgan told her the news, came back into her mind. She had given way; but she must pull herself together. Sir Vernon, old and weak as he was, must be told the news; and she must tell him. She must tell him at once, lest tidings should break on him suddenly from some other quarter. Already the police were probably in the house. With a powerful effort, Joan forced herself to be calm. Drying her eyes, she stood upright, and looked at herself in the glass. She would need all her power to break the news to the old man whom she loved—the old man who had loved John Prinsep far more than he loved her.