It was in vain that Lorelie pressed her visitors to stay. Beatrice declared that she must go, and within the space of a few minutes she had taken a very abrupt leave of her hostess.
That night Idris' sleep was broken by troubled dreams, in all of which a woman's image mingled, always in the act of striking down some shadowy foe; but the venue was changed from the elegant apartment at The Cedars to the grey stone interior of Ormfell!
CHAPTER XIV TOLD BY THE VASE
Next morning Idris strove to put aside the fear that had found expression in his dreams, but the dark idea would persist in forcing itself upon him. He grew angry with himself. Heavens! was he not master of his own mind that he could not throw off this suspicion of the woman whom he loved? Strange and mysterious Lorelie might be, but that she was a taker of human life he found it impossible to believe.
Doubtless it was true that a murder had taken place within Ormfell, but that the crime had been wrought by a stiletto hairpin was merely a conjecture on the part of Beatrice, who had no valid reason to offer in support of her theory: yet, imbued with this fancy she was persistent in maintaining that a woman must have been the author of the deed.
Assuming it, however, to be a fact that the piece of steel was a fragment of a hairpin, and the person who used it as an instrument of death a woman, it did not follow because Lorelie had drawn a stiletto pin from her hair in order to illustrate an assassination-scene in her play, that he must identify her with the guilty woman.
There was not only no evidence to connect Lorelie with the crime, but much to prove the contrary. For instance, it requires a very long period of time before a human body will become reduced to the state of a skeleton such as that which Idris and Godfrey had found in the interior of the ancient tumulus.
But Lorelie's coming to Ormsby had taken place less than five months ago. Therefore, unless the remains had been brought from elsewhere, she could have had no hand in the crime.