Volume Three—Chapter Eight.
The Friend in Need.
There was quite a meeting at little Miss Clode’s the next morning, after a heavy storm that had set in during the night; but, though the ordinary atmosphere was fresh, clear, cool and bright after the heavy rain, the social atmosphere grew more dense and lurid, hour by hour, as the callers rolled the news snow-ball on till Annie Clode’s eyes looked as if they would never close again, and her mouth formed a veritable round O.
Miss Clode herself was in a state of nervous prostration, but she forced herself to be in the shop and listen, gathering scraps of information which she sifted, casting aside the rubbish and retaining only what was good, so as to piece together afterwards, and lay before herself what was the whole truth.
The accounts were sufficiently alarming; and among others it was current that Sir Harry Payne was eloping with Claire Denville, when Mrs Burnett followed to stop them, and Frank Burnett in a fit of rage and jealousy, stabbed her and Sir Harry.
Another account stated that it was Sir Matthew Bray who had stabbed Mrs Burnett, and that he had been seized and put in prison for the deed, while Lady Drelincourt had gone mad from love and misery, and had been found by Fisherman Dick and a couple of friends six miles inland, lost on the Downs, drenched with rain, and raving so that she had had to be held down in the cart that the fishermen had been using to carry mackerel.
Everybody smiled at the word mackerel, and thought of French brandy for some reason or another.
This last business was as much canvassed as May Burnett’s injury, for subsequent inquiry proved that Lady Drelincourt really had been brought home by Fisherman Dick, and that she was delirious and attended by two doctors.