Charles did not appear to hear him. He was looking fixedly before him, his hand had dropped from Ralph's shoulder, his face was quite gray.
"Then," he said, slowly, as if waking out of a dream, "it was not Carr."
"No," said Sir George; "I never thought it was."
"Good God!" ejaculated Charles, sinking into a low chair by the fire, and shading his face with his hand. "Not Carr, after all!"
But my indignation could not be restrained a moment longer. I had only been kept silent by repeated signs from Marston, and now I broke out.
"And so, sir, you suspect my friend," I said, "and insult him in your father's house by turning the key on him. You endeavor to throw suspicion on a man who never injured you in the slightest degree. You insult me in insulting my friend, sir. Suspicion is not always such an easy thing to shake off as it has been in this instance. I, on my side, might ask what you were doing walking about the passages in your socks at four o'clock this morning? In your socks, sir, still in your evening clothes—"
I had spoken it anger, not thinking much what I was saying, and I stopped short, alarmed at the effect of my own words.
"I knew it! I knew it!" gasped Sir George, in his hoarse, suffocated voice, and he fell back panting among his pillows.
Charles took his hand from his face, and looked hard at me with a strange kind of smile.
"At any rate we are quits, Middleton," he said. "You have done it now, and no mistake."