One glance at the table was sufficient:—the money was gone!
Mr. Torrens dashed his open palm against his forehead with frantic violence, and was about to utter a cry of rage and despair, when the remembrance of his unhappy daughter sealed his lips.
At the same instant he looked towards the sofa:—but, holy God! what a spectacle met his view!
For there lay the baronet with his head nearly severed from his body,—murdered—barbarously murdered upon the very sofa where his victim had so lately reposed in trance-like insensibility. On that sofa slept he his last sleep; and, even in that appalling moment when Mr. Torrens recoiled, shuddering and shocked, from the dreadful sight, it struck him that there was something of retributive justice not only in the loss of his own treasure but also in the death of Sir Henry Courtenay!
The frightened man uttered not a murmur as that spectacle encountered his eyes. His amazement was of so stupifying a nature that it sealed his lips—paralysed his powers of utterance. With staring orbs he gazed on the grisly corpse from which he recoiled staggeringly; and several minutes elapsed ere he could so far command his presence of mind, as even to become aware of his own dreadful predicament.
But as the truth dawned upon him, he was seized with indescribable alarms—with horrible apprehensions.
The double crime of robbery and murder, had been perpetrated so speedily and so noiselessly, that not a soul in the house was alarmed by any unusual sound—and Mr. Torrens felt the sickening conviction that it would be a difficult thing to persuade a jury that he himself was innocent! Suspicion must inevitably attach itself to him:—circumstantial evidence would be strong against him! In a word, the appalling truth broke in upon him, that he would be accused of the assassination of Sir Henry Courtenay!
Mr. Torrens sate down, and, burying his face in his hands, fell into a profound but most painful meditation.
Should he raise an alarm—arouse Jeffreys and the female-servant, as well as his daughter—and proclaim all he knew about the horrible transaction! No:—something whispered in his ear that he would not be believed. Rosamond, not knowing that he was the baronet's accomplice in achieving her dishonour, would naturally conceive that the murder was the result of paternal vengeance. It was, then, impossible to suffer the occurrence to transpire. But what was he to do with the body?—how dispose of it? Terrible dilemma!
All the atrocity of his crime towards his daughter now returned with a tremendously augmenting intensity to his mind. His punishment on earth had already begun:—he was doomed—accursed. Wretched man! gold was thy destroyer! Ah! gold—but thou hast lost thy gold,—and in a few days the creditors who yet remain unpaid, will be upon thee! But——