“You will have me tell you? You want to hear the thing—in words?”
“Yes, by all means.”
She had never once taken her frightened, fascinated gaze from his face. “You insist on hearing from my lips that while you were out last night your brother was murdered——”
“What!”
“Murdered not four miles from here, as he was driving on the road, and his body thrown down into a ravine. Some boys found it. Fortunately, everybody thinks it was an accident. The men who brought the news thought so.”
She had spoken the words coldly, as if they were commonplaces and had been learnt by rote; but all the passion of her being was flaming in her eyes, which transfixed him with their stare.
“Mur-dered!” the young man stammered, feeling his senses reeling. “Albert murdered! Oh-h this must be nonsense! It is too terrible to think of even! You are out of your mind, Isabel!”
Her lips quivered: “It would be no wonder if I were, after this!”
The darkened rooms, the sobbing of his Aunt upstairs, the sounds of anguish that he knew now had partially awakened him, the crazed demeanor of Isabel—all these rose around him, like a black fog, to choke and confound his mind. Her fixed gaze burned him.
“Tell me what you know!” he cried, wildly.