Here he remained for a few minutes, trying to think out his course. For he felt now full of a guilty knowledge, and in that knowledge, if he did not make it known, a sharer—an accomplice—in a murder. For so the law and the world would judge it. And then there was Edie!
A shiver of dread and misery ran through him as her bright little face crossed his mind, and he saw that by keeping silence till the discovery—for that must come—he would be so implicated that he would share his friend’s arrest; and, even if matters did not turn out serious with him as far as the law was concerned, his position with the admiral’s family would be the same as Stratton’s—everything would be at an end—his love affair like that of the miserable man before him; the man who now turned to him with a scared, horrified, hunted look in his eyes, startled by Guest’s advance.
It was time to speak, Guest thought, but the words would not come at first, and he could only gaze wildly at the wretched being before him, and think of their old schooldays together, then of their first fresh manhood, and always together, sharing purses, pleasures, troubles, full confidence always till this trouble had come.
For the moment he hated and loathed the man before him; but the feeling was momentary. Stratton would not wilfully have thrust himself into such a position. He felt that there must be something more than he knew, and, softening down, he said huskily:
“Well, Stratton, what have you to say?”
There was no answer. Stratton gazed at him with a far-off, fixed stare, full of helpless misery, which drew his friend far nearer in heart, and he spoke more freely now.
“Come,” he said; “speak out. In spite of everything, I am your old friend. I want to help you. Will you trust me?”
“Trust you? Yes,” said Stratton slowly.
“Tell me, then, everything, beginning from the morning when you were to be married.”
Stratton slowly shook his head.