He had witnessed some pretty trying scenes, but he had never seen anything like this. The Longlegs with her was her husband. Reverently he escorted her to the dead body and put a supporting arm around her as she fell on her knees.
This was awful, and the detective turned away. Then, compelled by the same fascination, he looked again. So young to suffer. Poor slip of a girl,—not more than half as old as his wife. Evidently she had been told not to shriek or cry out. Her fingers were locked in a painful grasp, her pitiful moans were barely audible. Frantically and repeatedly she kissed the cold face, and her tearless eyes sought her husband's in dumb entreaty.
Why had it happened? Who was to blame? Why had she not been with him? Her father—oh, her father! and the detective, though not a man given to much emotion, involuntarily voiced her mute and heart-broken pleadings.
"Do you still protest?" asked a grim voice in his ear.
"Confound you, no," he said, snappishly, to Captain White.
One of the Scotchmen quickly ran his spade over a scant grass plot designated by Miss Gastonguay. When the first earth was turned up, the girl sprang to her feet with an agonised cry, "Must I forgive them? Justin, I cannot."
H. Robinson watched her husband trying to comfort her, then crossing his hands behind his back he went for a short turn around the outside of the cemetery. Forgive whom? The man who had hunted her father to death. Poor thing,—she did not know what a villain he had been. Women were unreasonable. Well, the same end came to all. Some day some one would be digging a grave for him, and he uneasily surveyed his ample proportions. He had had some queer pains about his heart lately. Bah! what was the good of living anyway? What was the good of anything? Why had he been following up this affair at such a breakneck pace? For money, celebrity,—a paragraph in the newspapers.
Here in the solemn stillness of the night, and under the melancholy mystery of the stars, the chase seemed fruitless, the rewards worthless. He would go home to his wife. Let the poor devil sleep in peace. Why didn't they take that girl away? and he peered through the iron railing at her.
He was quite near her now. "I forgive, I forgive—" he heard her articulate. "Dear father, they did not mean to make you suffer."
The tearlessness of her grief was over. Her whole frame was shaken by violent weeping. Soon she would sob hard enough to tear her in two. He had seen women in crying spells before.