"I believe he would kill him to spite me!"
"Madge!" said the exemplary spinster in a voice which for the first time reminded her of Heriot's.
Mrs. Dunbar collected herself. Doubtless she realized the injustice she was doing that excellent man.
"I am sorry, Mary," she said gently. "I don't know what I'm saying. I admire Andrew as much as any one. I didn't mean it. It was only that I felt I had to blame some one for this terrible sorrow."
Her friend continued to look at her with decidedly diminished warmth.
"Our religion forbids us—" she began austerely; but the sympathetic widow hurriedly anticipated her.
"I know, I know, dear—so it does. How true, Mary; oh, how true! How sweet of you to remind me."
She turned her large black eyes, glistening pathetically, full upon her friend; but for some reason Mary continued to regard her with a new and curious expression. A trace of suspicion seemed to be among its ingredients.
Meanwhile her slandered nephew was in the library with his two elder sisters. The gas was now lit and the storm curtained out. Mrs. Ramornie and Andrew talked in decorously lowered voices; Mrs. Donaldson more loudly, and almost more airily, as became her dashing appearance and smart reputation. Yet she too had a nice sense of the solemnity of the occasion, and they forgave her elevated voice, since they knew several people of rank who talked like that.
"An irretrievable loss," Andrew was saying; "an irretrievable loss."