Besides, it was unlikely there would be questions.
Murder was too everyday an occurrence just now. And, though the Terror had not yet come to Varenac, it would be no great matter of surprise that a noble landlord returning to his own should be found with a bullet in his heart in the woods near his home.
So Jack Denningham argued as he hurried back along the forest path, only stopping to wash the blood once more from his hand, and with scarcely a thought to bestow on a quondam friend who lay with eyes fast closed and white face upturned to greet the sunbeams which stole down, half shyly, through leafy shade, to peep, as it were, at that which lay so still amongst the fading bracken.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE HUT OF NANETTE LEROC
But my Lord Denningham had for once been out-witted by a fate more merciful than himself.
A strangely perverse fate, too, for here she had changed destruction to salvation. The bullet, winging its way straight to the heart of Morice Conyers, had glanced aside on the brass button of his heavy travelling-coat and entered the body several inches to the right of the spot intended. True, the victim had fallen instantly, his own shot having gone wide of its mark amongst the trees, and there he lay, bleeding and unconscious.
But Death had stepped aside—its grey form slipping away through the misty shadows to pursue other prey.
And thus, in time, Morice opened his eyes once more and found himself, not in Paradise or Purgatory, but lying still on his bracken couch, his white shirt stiff with blood, and a feeling of cold faintness which kept his thoughts slipping from him like ghosts of a fleeting vision. But presently the misty haze swimming before his eyes cleared a little, and he became conscious that some one was talking near him.