I declined to say how I should proceed with my murderer. If I had it in me to love a man against my reason and my conscience I could not tell.
"It's eleven o'clock," I said. "I thought you told me he would be here by half-past ten."
She ceased to fidget with the furniture, and came to the mantelpiece by which I was standing.
"The clock's wrong," she said. "Fast, a good half-hour." She seized the little gold carriage clock and shook it in her nervous fingers as if that would put the matter right. The door opened.
"Here he is!" she said, and started violently, almost dropping the clock.
It was Hugh who came in, his face pale, a fire of excitement gleaming in his eyes, his watch in his hand. "He should have been here half an hour ago. It is as I told you: he has made a bolt," he said.
"The dog-cart is not back?"
"No; but you'll see!"
"Are the men gone to bed, Hugh?"
"No, they're in there"; he gave a backward toss of his head in the direction of the smoking-room. "It all makes me sick," he said. "I can't sit there and hee-haw with them."