All the time little Miss Culpepper had fluttered about in a state of increasing agitation, peering out of the kitchen door at intervals, retreating swiftly when she feared she might be discovered, and keeping Cleopatra and her kittens from intruding on the colloquy. Now she fluttered in and out the parlour, looking wistfully and anxiously at that still figure in the chair, but not daring to speak to her. At last she could bear it no longer, but fell on her knees beside Grace, putting her thin old arms round her and crying: “Oh, my dear, my dear, don’t sit like that; you frighten me so! Say something, do something; tell me what’s the matter; let me do something to help! Oh, you’re as cold as ice—my poor darling!”
Grace shivered; she was indeed icy cold, though she had not been conscious of that or of anything else but those words that whirled round and round in her brain, and that now at last she uttered aloud with stiff, white lips.
“Roger has been arrested. They say he murdered Lady Rawson.”
Miss Culpepper uttered a shrill little scream.
“Oh, my dear child, how wicked, how positively supposterous. Not the murder, of course—no, no, I don’t mean that, it was wicked—but to say that dear young gentleman could have done such a thing—he to whom Cleopatra has taken as she has never taken to any human being of the sterner sex, not even to the Reverend Smithson, though he is such a learned man. And I trust Cleopatra’s common sense against all the judges and juries in the world! But, my darling girl, you must excuse me—I can’t help it—for you are a darling and so is your dear, handsome young husband—no wonder you are so distressed! But don’t sit like that! Weep, my love, weep; it will ease your poor heart! As for me, if I’d only known what those meridians of the law were after I’d—I’d let them have a piece of my mind! I’ll let them have it yet, that I will!”
She actually shook her small fists, in imagination threatening Snell and his fellow-“meridian” with physical violence; and so irresistibly comic did the staunch little creature appear that the tension in Grace’s overwrought brain snapped, and she laughed aloud—laughter that brought blessed tears—and for a time they just clung together and sobbed, till gradually she regained a measure of real composure, quite different from that frozen, unnatural calm she had forced herself to maintain.
She told Miss Culpepper as much of the circumstances as seemed necessary. It was a relief to do so now, and the old lady punctuated the recital with exclamations and comments.
“I saw something about a murder in those newspapers you lent me on Saturday,” she confessed; “but I really did not read it. I very seldom do read newspapers; they are so full of cunards in these days that one really does not know what to believe. And of course I never associated it with you two—how could I? And on your wedding day! Of course, I knew you were only just married; though I pretended I didn’t, as you didn’t tell me in so many words. And to think of the honeymoon ending like this!”
“It hasn’t ended,” said Grace. “Roger will be, he must be, released—soon; to-day, perhaps. But I must be up and doing—I must get back to Town by the next train; and I must go to the garage and see about having the car sent back to Dover.”
There were, indeed, many things to see to, and eagerly the old lady helped. Lovingly, while Grace had gone on her errand, she prepared a dainty meal, and stood over her, coaxing and insisting till she made a pretence at least of eating.