"Well, I don't know," said Vicky. "After all, we've had him ever since Friday, so it's time somebody else had a turn."
This was too much for Mary, and she got up from the table, bringing the party to an end. Hugh declined going into the drawing-room with the two girls, but instead took his leave of them, and drove back to the Manor, having promised to meet Vicky outside the Coroner's Court on the following morning.
Not long after his departure, Steel arrived, and was ushered into the drawing-room. Ermyntrude, still reclining upon the sofa, greeted him with unaffected pleasure; and Mary could not help feeling, as she watched him take Ermyntrude's little plump hand in his own strong one, that he must undoubtedly represent a pillar of strength to clinging womanhood. The story was poured into his ears, and his reactions to it were all that Vicky had hoped they might be. Nothing could have formed a greater contrast to the Prince's excitable display than Steel's rugged calm. He indulged in no aspersions upon his late rival's character; he merely said that it was a good thing the fellow had gone, and that he had never taken to him much. He even refused to join Ermyntrude in attributing the Prince's oblique attack on Vicky to his having murdered Wally himself, remarking that he didn't think the fellow would have the guts to do it. When he was alone with Ermyntrude, he held her hand in an uncomfortably strong grasp, and told her that whatever happened she could rely on him.
Ermyntrude wept a little, and confided to him the fear that was gnawing at her nerves. "Oh, Bob, they won't think it was my Vicky, will they?"
"No," he replied.
The simple negative was wonderfully reassuring, but she could not be quite satisfied. "Bob, it keeps nagging at me day and night! I ought never to have told her about Wally and that girl, only I was so upset at the time, it just slipped out. And I keep thinking about it, wondering, because she's not like most girls, my Vicky. You never know what she'll get up to next! Bob, she - she couldn't have done a thing like that! She couldn't!"
"She didn't do it. You can put that clean out of your head."
"I know, I know! But I can't help its coming back to me. For there's no denying she was there, and it's in the blood, Bob. You can't get away from that!"
"That's a lot of rot," said Steel. "Your first husband wasn't a murderer!"
"No, but look at the animals he killed in his time! I mean, he had a regular passion for it, but he took it out on lions and tigers and things; and I can't help thinking of a book I read once, all about impulses, and what you inherit from your parents, and things that happen to you in the cradle that go and give you fixtures, or some such nonsense, and I ask myself if perhaps there is something in it after all, and I ought to have seen to it my Vicky had a chance to shoot bigger things than just a few rabbits here and there."