“What do you know—what is the ‘all’?” Her voice had lost timbre. It was suddenly weak, but from suspense and excitement rather than from fear.
“I saw you last night with him, by the river. I saw what you did. I heard you say, ‘Yes, to-morrow, for sure.’ I saw what you did.”
Her eyes were busy with the knitting now. She did not know what to say. Then, he had known all since the night before! He knew it when he pretended that his head ached—knew it as he lay by her side all night. He knew it, and said nothing! But what had he done—what had he done? She waited for she knew not what. George Masson was to come and inspect the flume early that morning. Had he come? She had not seen him. But the river was flowing through the flume: she could hear the mill-wheel turning—she could hear the mill-wheel turning!
As she did not speak, with a curious husky shrillness to his voice he said: “There he was down in the flume, there was I at the lever above, there was the mill-wheel unlocked. There it was. I gripped the lever, and—”
Her great eyes stared with horror. The knitting-needles stopped; a pallor swept across her face. She felt as she did when she heard the court-martial sentence Carvillho Gonzales to death.
The mill-wheel sounded louder and louder in her ears.
“You let in the river!” she cried. “You drove him into the wheel—you killed him!”
“What else was there to do?” he demanded. “It had to be done, and it was the safest way. It would be an accident. Such a thing might easily happen.”
“You have murdered him!” she gasped with a wild look.
“To call it murder!” he sneered. “Surely my wife would not call it murder.”