"Where is it, Tim? Where is it?" cried Chandos.
"Here!" said the boy, leading the way to the library, and then pointing to the door.
They opened it; and found what had been Sir William Winslow on the floor, with a pistol firmly clenched in his right hand, and the barrel grasped between his teeth. A powder-flask and bag of balls lay on a chair; and the carpet was drenched with blood.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Crowds came and went to and from Elmsly House. For a long week the little world of the neighbourhood was kept in agitation by facts and falsehoods. Coroner's juries sat, and returned a verdict as much opposed to common sense as usual. The constables from S---- went back to their own place unaccompanied, and lost their labour. The Great Devourer had swallowed up the destined prey of judges and juries. Sir William Winslow was pronounced to have destroyed himself in a moment of temporary insanity; and there is no trying the dead for murder. The people viewed the plain and unostentatious funeral with feelings of greater awe than is usually felt; for crime, by its happy rarity, has a greater effect than common death. Wild tales were told; some near to, some far from, the truth; and the nine days' wonder subsided, leaving the sky clear, and the waters smooth again.
So much for the outside of Elmsly House. In the inside, other scenes were taking place. Chandos did not quit the house, but, with his solicitor, remained in possession of that which was now his own; but the second night after the fatal event, when the coroner had sat and his jury had returned their verdict, the old servant Jacob came to his young master in the library, to tell him that there was a woman walking round and round the house, and weeping. "I saw her just now, Sir," said the man; "and she seems flesh and blood; but were it not for that, I could almost swear that it was poor Susan Grey, of the mill, who drowned herself, you may remember."
"She was saved, my good friend," answered Chandos. "I will go and speak to her."
He went, and what took place he did not ever care to repeat; but on his return he ordered the hall door to be left open night and day, and no one to oppose the entrance of that woman at any time, or to speak to her if they saw her. Each night she visited the room where the body of Sir William Winslow lay, and sat beside it from the hour of midnight till the east grew gray. On the night before the funeral she covered the coffin with ivy-leaves, and lingered till it was quite light ere she departed. Chandos Winslow was already up; and a servant, who watched at the door, instantly gave him notice that she was going forth. He followed her at once, and spoke to her both long and earnestly. The servants from the windows saw him show her a paper too; but she did not return with him to the house, which they judged by his gestures that he asked her to do.
On the following day, he and the boy Tim went out on foot, in deep mourning, and remained away for several hours; and in the evening they set out for London.
The first visit of Chandos was, as might be expected to the house of General Tracy; but he had little more to tell than the party there already knew, for his letters had been frequent during the last week. He thought Rose looked more lovely than ever; and though all that she had gone through, and the dark events which had connected themselves with the rise and progress of their love, had cast a saddening shade over the sparkling brightness of her face, yet there seemed to the eyes of Chandos more gained than lost by that softening melancholy. When Emily appeared, she was in mourning, not very deep, yet sufficient to mark a sense of the painful circumstances under which she had been freed from her ill-starred engagement to his brother. She greeted him warmly and affectionately; and gazed at him and Rose as they sat together on the sofa, as if she fancied, in her desponding mood, that in their happiness would consist her future. A brighter fate, however, was reserved for her at last.