With dread at my heart I tried to clasp his hand, but he waved me back with a gesture suggestive of surprise, despair, terror, shame, grief—any or all of these might have prompted the singular motion of his arm. If I had come upon him in the very act of murder, he could not have shown greater agitation. The fingers of his left hand relaxed their grip, and the valise they were holding dropped silently upon the snow. His action said more plainly than words: "Go back! go back! There is that happening of which you must know nothing."
To my mind there could be but one cause of his emotion, a cause as awful to me as to him, and it burst from my lips in a hoarse cry.
"Good heavens, George! Surely—surely Daphne isn't dead?"
There was no reply. The laxity of his limbs and his reclining attitude against the iron column showed that he had scarcely strength to stand. Then a sudden gust of wind blew aside both his cloak and his coat, exposing his white vest to view. And there upon that vest, plain to be seen, was a red stain large and round! For one moment only was it visible in the fitful light of the gas-lamp; the next, the folds of his cloak enveloping him again, concealed it from view.
"What is the matter? Why don't you speak?" I cried, and overcoming the vague terror that had possessed me, I stepped forward.
But before I could touch him, he gave a swift glance around, apparently seeking some way of escape, and suddenly snatching up the valise, he darted through the gate-way opposite him. Hurrying up the garden-path, he ascended a flight of steps, and while I was still gazing after him in amazement, he disappeared within the portico that gave entrance to the house.
Here was a strange affair. George, on his wedding-morn in a town far distant from his bride, trying to avoid me, his brother, after having invited me to be his best man! A second explanation of his conduct occurred to me and found its way to my tongue.
"He is mad!" and I hesitated to follow. It is not an infrequent thing for the insane to think their dearest friends their foes. And this thought begot another, more fearful still to me;