Clarissa's eyes wandered from the still white face, with its awful closed eyes, only to rest for a moment on the unlucky locket.
"I gave that to my sister-in-law," she said indifferently. "Heaven only knows how he came by it." And then, in a different tone, she asked, "Why don't you do something for him? Why don't you fetch some one? Do you want him to die?"
"Yes. Do you think anything less than his death would satisfy me? Don't alarm yourself; I am not going to kill him. I was quite ready to do it just now in hot blood. But he is safe enough now. What good would there be in making an end of him? There are two of you in it."
"You can kill me, if you like," said Clarissa "Except for my child's sake,
I have little wish to live."
"For your child's sake!" echoed her husband scornfully. "Do you think there is anything in common between my son and you, after to-night?"
He dropped the locket on George Fairfax's breast with a contemptuous gesture, as if he had been throwing away a handful of dirt. That folly had cost dearly enough.
"I'll go and fetch some one," he said. "Don't let your distraction make you forget that the man wants all the air he can get. You had better stand away from him."
Clarissa obeyed mechanically. She stood a little way off, staring at that lifeless figure, while Daniel Granger went to fetch the porter. The house was large, and at this time in the evening for the most part untenanted, and Austin's painting-room was over the arched carriage-way. Thus it happened that no one had heard that fall of George Fairfax's.
Mr. Granger explained briefly that the gentleman had had a fall, and was stunned—would the porter fetch the nearest doctor? The man looked a him rather suspiciously. The lovely lady's arrival in the gloaming; a locked door; this middle-aged Englishman's eagerness to get into the rooms; and now a fall and the young Englishman is disabled. The leaf out of a romance began to assume a darker aspect. There had been murder done, perhaps, up yonder. The porter's comprehensive vision surveyed the things that might be—the house fallen into evil repute by reason of this crime, and bereft of lodgers. The porter was an elderly man, and did not care to shift his household gods.
"What have they come to do up there?" he asked. "I think I had better fetch the sergent de ville."