Archibald Martin Floyd sat with his daughter and Lucy, in Mrs. Mellish's morning-room, the pleasantest chamber for many reasons, but chiefly because it was removed from the bustle of the house, and from the chance of unwelcome intrusion. All the troubles of that household had been made light of in the presence of the old man, and no word had been dropped before him, which could give him reason to guess that his only child had been suspected of the most fearful crime that man or woman can commit. But Archibald Floyd was not easily to be deceived where his daughter's happiness was in question; he had watched that beautiful face—whose ever-varying expression was its highest charm—so long and earnestly, as to have grown familiar with its every look. No shadow upon the brightness of his daughter's beauty could possibly escape the old man's eyes, dim as they may have grown for the figures in his banking-book. It was Aurora's business, therefore, to sit by her father's side in the pleasant morning-room, to talk to him and amuse him; while John rambled hither and thither, and made himself otherwise tiresome to his patient companion, Talbot Bulstrode. Mrs. Mellish repeated to her father again and again, that there was no cause for uneasiness; they were merely anxious—naturally anxious—that the guilty man should be found and brought to justice; nothing more.
The banker accepted this explanation of his daughter's pale face very quietly; but he was not the less anxious,—anxious he scarcely knew why, but with the shadow of a dark cloud hanging over him, that was not to be driven away.
Thus the long August day wore itself out, and the low sun—blazing a lurid red behind the trees in Mellish Wood, until it made that pool beside which the murdered man had fallen, seem a pool of blood—gave warning that one weary day of watching and suspense was nearly done.
John Mellish, far too restless to sit long at dessert, had roamed out upon the lawn: still attended by his indefatigable keeper, Talbot Bulstrode, and employed himself in pacing up and down the smooth grass amid Mr. Dawson's flower-beds, looking always towards the pathway that led to the house, and breathing suppressed anathemas against the dilatory detective.
"One day nearly gone, thank Heaven, Talbot!" he said, with an impatient sigh. "Will to-morrow bring us no nearer what we want, I wonder? What if it should go on like this for long? what if it should go on for ever, until Aurora and I go mad with this wretched anxiety and suspense? Yes, I know you think me a fool and a coward, Talbot Bulstrode; but I can't bear it quietly, I tell you I can't. I know there are some people who can shut themselves up with their troubles, and sit down quietly and suffer without a groan; but I can't. I must cry out when I am tortured, or I should dash my brains out against the first wall I came to, and make an end of it. To think that anybody should suspect my darling! to think that they should believe her to be——"
"To think that you should have believed it, John!" said Mr. Bulstrode, gravely.
"Ah, there's the cruelest stab of all," cried John; "if I,—I who know her, and love her, and believe in her as man never yet believed in woman,—if I could have been bewildered and maddened by that horrible chain of cruel circumstances, every one of which pointed—Heaven help me!—at her!—if I could be deluded by these things until my brain reeled, and I went nearly mad with doubting my own dearest love, what may strangers think—strangers who neither know nor love her, but who are only too ready to believe anything unnaturally infamous? Talbot, I won't endure this any longer. I'll ride into Doncaster and see this man Grimstone. He must have done some good to-day. I'll go at once."
Mr. Mellish would have walked straight off to the stables; but Talbot Bulstrode caught him by the arm.
"You may miss the man on the road, John," he said. "He came last night after dark, and may come as late to-night. There's no knowing whether he'll come by the road, or the short cut across the fields. You're as likely to miss him as not."
Mr. Mellish hesitated.