"Nothing important, Mary. Nothing important," he said, with an evident desire to be cheerful. "I think we're going to have a nice day, too, although we are so close to Christmas. But it's really too warm for this time of year."
For several minutes he evidently tried to make conversation, with but little success. The girl made no response to anything he said, but sat silently toying with the food that was placed before her.
The meal was nearly at an end when a servant came in bearing a telegram. The Judge took it from the salver and opened it almost indifferently, but a second later his eyes were wild with terror, and his hands trembled like an autumn leaf shaken with the wind.
"My God!" he exclaimed.
"What is it, father?"
He had risen from his seat. He did not speak. He seemed unable to answer her.
"What is it, father? Is someone ill—dying—what?"
And she snatched the wisp of thin paper from her father's hand.
"Ned murdered," she read. "Found early this morning with a knife in his heart. Stabbed from the back. Stepaside apprehended for murder. We're all distracted.—WILSON."
For a moment the words seemed to swim before her eyes. She could not grasp their purport; and yet, even then, that which filled her heart with terror was not the fact that Ned Wilson was dead but that Paul Stepaside was apprehended as his murderer. She knew of the long feud that had existed between them. She had heard a garbled account of Paul's attack on Wilson on the night when he had been elected a member for Brunford. She remembered all that rumour had said during her father's political contest in Brunford, knew that it was the talk of the town that Wilson had tried to ruin him. And Paul Stepaside was not a gentle man. He was strong, passionate—a man who in his anger would stop at nothing. Had Wilson, she wondered, aroused him to some uncontrollable fury? And had Paul, in his anger, struck him down? But a knife in his back, what did it mean? Paul could never do that, and yet——