"It is too horrible, mamma." Wanda closed her eyes tightly for a moment, trying to shut out the picture which burned so in her brain. Every little detail stood out in her memory clear cut and vivid, the grass trampled into a rude circle, the hand that clung in death to what it had last grasped in life, the grotesquely crumpled, huddled body.
"Tell me about it, Wanda." Her mother was looking into the frankly distressed face, curiously. Wanda had again the uneasy idea that her mother was wondering about the trunk which she had just locked, and again a quick fear leaped up within her that she might guess the secret it concealed.
"How did you happen to find him?"
"Shep was with me, running ahead. Shep found him."
"And some one had killed him?"
Wanda nodded, her lips tight pressed together, her hands twisting about each other in her lap. For a moment there was silence in the little room.
"Wanda, look at me, dear."
Her eyes turned, wondering, from the window and the orchard beyond, and went swiftly to her mother. The words were very clearly a command now. The voice was lowered a little but had grown more insistent. And it seemed to her that Mrs. Leland's eyes had in them now something more than sadness and anxiety, that they were suspicious. Again Wanda felt the hot blood in her temples.
"What is it, mamma?"
"Who killed Arthur? Do you know?"