"My poor darling, I was a fool to bring you back. I should never have done so, but for Talbot's advice. He urged me so strongly to come back directly. He said that if there should be any disturbance about the murder, we ought to be upon the spot."
"Disturbance! What disturbance?" cried Aurora.
Her face blanched as she spoke, and her heart sank within her. What further disturbance could there be? Was the ghastly business as yet unfinished, then? She knew—alas! only too well—that there could be no investigation of this matter which would not bring her name before the world linked with the name of the dead man. How much she had endured in order to keep that shameful secret from the world! How much she had sacrificed in the hope of saving her father from humiliation! And now, at the last, when she had thought that the dark chapter of her life was finished, the hateful page blotted out,—now, at the very last, there was a probability of some new disturbance which would bring her name and her history into every newspaper in England.
"Oh, John, John!" she cried, bursting into a passion of hysterical sobs, and covering her face with her clasped hands; "am I never to hear the last of this? Am I never, never, never to be released from the consequences of my miserable folly?"
The butler entered the room as she said this; she rose hurriedly, and walked to one of the windows, in order to conceal her face from the man.
"I beg your pardon, sir," the old servant said; "but they've found something in the park, and I thought perhaps you might like to know——"
"They've found something! What?" exclaimed John, utterly bewildered between his agitation at the sight of his wife's grief and his endeavour to understand the man.
"A pistol, sir. One of the stable-lads found it just now. He went to the wood with another boy to look at the place where—the—the man was shot; and he's brought back a pistol he found there. It was close against the water, but hid away among the weeds and rushes. Whoever threw it there, thought, no doubt, to throw it in the pond; but Jim, that's one of the boys, fancied he saw something glitter, and sure enough it was the barrel of a pistol; and I think must be the one that the trainer was shot with, Mr. John."
"A pistol!" cried Mr. Mellish; "let me see it."
His servant handed him the weapon. It was small enough for a toy, but none the less deadly in a skilful hand. It was a rich man's fancy, deftly carried out by some cunning gunsmith, and enriched by elaborate inlaid work of purple steel and tarnished silver. It was rusty, from exposure to rain and dew; but Mr. Mellish knew the pistol well, for it was his own.