'Thank God, you are safe!' said Ida, the memory of that terrible dawn quickly recurring to her mind, a little bewildered at the first moment by her strange surroundings. 'Where is Brian?'
Fanny Palliser burst into tears.
'Oh, Ida, it was Brian set the house on fire, in one of his mad fits—hunting for some horrible thing behind his bed-curtains; and poor Towler and the nurse were both asleep when it happened—at least, Towler, who was sitting up with him had fallen into a doze, and heard Brian talk about looking for serpents in the curtains, and then about flames and fire—but didn't take any notice, or so much as open his eyes—for his talk had been so often of fire and flames—poor creature!—and when he woke the whole room was in a blaze, and the fire had spread through the open door to the window curtains in the next room. Towler and the nurse, and Rogers, all did their uttermost, and risked their lives trying to get Brian away; but he wouldn't leave the burning rooms. He got wilder and wilder; and then, just as they were calling a couple of the stablemen to help them, meaning to get him away by main force, he rushed to the window and threw himself out.'
'And he was killed!' cried Ida.
'Yes; the shock killed him. But you know, dear, there's no use in fretting. Mr. Fosbroke says that he could not have lived till the end of the week. His constitution was quite gone. It was a happy release.'
'Not such a death,' murmured Ida, tears streaming down her wan cheeks; 'such a death could not be a happy release.'
Lady Palliser shook her head, and sighed plaintively. Perhaps she had been inclined to take the survivor's view of the question. Euthanasia to Fanny Palliser's mind meant a death which relieves the family of the deceased from the burden of a long illness.
'He did not suffer at all, dearest,' she said, soothingly.
'Mr. Fosbroke said the shock killed him. There were no bones broken. He fell on the grass in front of the library windows. And oh, Ida, what a blessing that everything at Wimperfield is fully insured! The house is completely gutted!'
Ida could not feel sorry about Wimperfield. The place had been to her of late the abode of horror. If she could be glad of anything in her present frame of mind, it would have been to know that Wimperfield House was razed to the ground.