"I suppose," he said, "that Laura knew very little of your friendship with poor Godfrey Pavely?"
And she answered, again in that hard, cold voice, "Yes, Laura did know, I think, almost everything there was to know. She didn't care—she didn't mind. Laura has no feeling."
As he made no reply to that, she went on, rather breathlessly, and with sudden passion, "You think that I'm unfair—you think that Laura really cares because she looked so shocked and miserable this morning? But that's just what she was—shocked, nothing else. What is a piece of terrible, terrible bad luck for me, is good—very good luck for Laura!"
There was such concentrated bitterness in her tone that Lord St. Amant felt repelled—repelled as well as sorry.
But all he said was: "Would you like to go back to my rooms for an hour or two? They're quite near here."
"No, I'd rather face Laura now, at once. After all, I shall have to see her some time. I'm bound to be her nearest neighbour for a while, at any rate."
Late that same night the awful news was broken to Mrs. Tropenell by her son. He had sent a message saying he would be down by the last train, and she had sat up for him, knowing nothing, yet aware that something had happened that morning which had sent Laura and Katty hurrying up to town.
Perhaps because the news he told was so unexpected, so strange, and to them both of such vital moment, the few minutes which followed Oliver's return remained stamped, as if branded with white hot iron, on the tablets of Mrs. Tropenell's memory.
When she heard his firm, hurried footsteps outside, she ran to let him in, and at once, as he came into the house, he said in a harsh, cold voice: "Godfrey Pavely is dead, mother. A foreigner with whom he had entered into business relations shot him by accident. The man wrote to Laura a confession of what he had done. She got the letter this morning, took it up to London to the police—the best thing she could do—and Pavely's body was found at the place indicated, a business office."